A multiperiod, theoretical model characterizes the relationship between a publication that ranks universities and prospective students who might use this ranking to decide which university to attend. The published ranking offers information about the universities’ objective quality but also affects their prestige, which may increase student utility. This prestige effect gives the commercial publication incentive to act contrary to the best interest of the students. If a ranking created with the commonly used attribute-and-aggregate methodology creates prestige, then to maximize profit the publication needs to (1) choose attribute score weights that do not match student preferences and (2) alter those attribute score weights over time, even in the absence of changes to student preferences and/or education technology. Without a prestige effect, the publication should choose attribute score weights that match student preferences. This model also defines a student-optimal ranking methodology that maximizes the sum of the students’ utilities. The results offer insights for prospective students who use existing rankings to choose a university, as well as which ranking designs would better align with students’ preferences.
Any formulation of the university ranking game involves the perspectives of the 3 key actors: (1) graduating high-school students, (2) universities, and (3) ranking publications. These university rankings are developed and maintained by for-profit publications or magazines, which must balance 2 potentially conflicting motives: (1) to provide students with information to help them decide which university to attend and (2) to increase the revenues of the publication. The actions of the students involve their decision on which universities to apply to and which university to attend among those they are admitted to. The universities seek to attract the best students and seek to improve their ranking to do so. We frame these diverse motives and the ensuing actions of these 3 sets of actors as the university ranking game and discuss the potential inefficiencies in the game and the possibility for unethical behavior by publications and universities.KEY WORDS: University rankings · Assessment of higher education · University admissions and matriculation decisions · Game theory
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