In the Eyes of Our Beholders: Some Evidence on How High-School Students and Their Parents View Quality in Colleges

Athletics success and institutional rankings

“…Such approaches are not without their critics, who attribute factors such as increasing tuition costs to institutions playing the rankings game (Eide, Brewer, and Ehrenberg, 1998;Hossler and Foley, 1995;Litten and Hall, 1989) or who simply contend that they do not-and cannotrepresent academic quality (McGuire, 1995;Schmitz, 1993). Also, USNWR ranks all institutions that are somewhat selective, assigning them into several categories.…”

Consumer Valuation Of Higher Education And Adjusted Rates Of Return

“…The larger its value the greater the research emphasis of the school. Litten and Hall (1989) analyzed a survey of 236 high school seniors and their parents in an attempt to define what constitutes a quality college in the opinion of the purchasers of the good. Both the seniors and their parents identified a faculty which devotes a high degree of effort to teaching rather than research as a very important indicator of the quality of the college.…”

An Institutional Perspective on Higher Education Policy: The Case of Academic Quality Assurance

“…Research on academic programs and college choice in the US offers little support for this assumption (Litten and Hall, 1989). In the absence of valid measures of undergraduate program quality, research quality has become a proxy for academic quality, thereby providing additional motivation for universities to invest in research over teaching as a means of attracting top students (Brewer, Gates and Goldman, 2002).…”