Thesis advisor: Ana M. Martinez-Aleman / This study explored the perceptions and influences of the respondents to the <italic>U.S. News &amp World Report</italic>'s (<italic>USNWR</italic>) reputational survey for graduate schools of education (GSOEs). These respondents represent two unique stakeholder groups for graduate programs of education: GSOE deans and school superintendents. The existing literature regarding the <italic>USNWR</italic> rankings has been predominantly quantitative, with an emphasis on methodological problems with the rankings. This study employed mixed methods: quantitative analysis to determine the weight of the reputational surveys in the rankings, and qualitative to explore the perceptions of the raters of reputation for GSOEs. This study highlights several unique challenges in the ranking of GSOEs, including the multiple missions and widely varying programs across schools of education. In particular the rankings fail to distinguish between the GSOE predominant dual purposes of preparing researchers and preparing practitioners. The rankings may be contributing to the divide between research and practice in the academy. This study confirms with the GSOE deans that the rankings do <italic>matter</italic>, on and off campus, influencing the public perception of their programs. At a weighting of 40%, as stated by <italic>USWNR</italic>, reputation carries the greatest weight of all categories of input variables in the rankings. In terms of the reputational survey respondent groups, this study finds a significant difference between their levels of engagement with the rankings. This study finds a lack of meaningful participation in the rankings by the superintendents, resulting in an input variable that is biased, methodologically flawed, and contributing to erroneous fluctuations in rank. In contrast, this study finds the GSOE deans are reluctant but active participants in the rankings. They are vested competitors in the rankings business. The results indicate that the dean holds a critical role in the reputation management of their programs. These findings suggest that the rankings steer the role of the deanship toward an external focus, with an emphasis on publicizing the scholarship and scholars of the GSOE, to establish and maintain a degree of prominence among peer GSOE deans. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2009. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Educational Administration and Higher Education.

Thesis advisor: Stephanie Greene / Thesis advisor: Richard McGowan / The competition among American colleges and universities for top students is now more fierce than ever. As the population of U.S. high school seniors has grown in recent years and the Common Application has facilitated the college application process, American institutions of higher education have scrambled to find new ways to encourage prospective students to apply and compel admitted students to matriculate. Among other factors that influence prospective students’ decisions during the college search and selection process, the existence of intercollegiate athletic programs may have a significant impact on students’ decisions to apply to or enroll at a particular university. However, many high-ranking officials within the realm of higher education seem to support the notion that athletics detract from academic prestige. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to test these two claims. An analysis of the data from U.S. News and World Report’s rankings of America’s Best National Universities for the past five years revealed that athletics did not detract from academic prestige, as there was no relationship discovered between existence of big-time intercollegiate athletic programs at an institution and that institution’s peer assessment score. A survey of 173 undergraduate students at Boston College supported the claim that the existence of intercollegiate athletic programs significantly impacted students’ decisions to apply to or enroll at Boston College. Furthermore, these survey results suggested that application numbers and yield at Boston College would decline if its big-time intercollegiate athletic programs were eliminated. / Thesis (BS) — Boston College, 2010. / Submitted to: Boston College. Carroll School of Management. / Discipline: College Honors Program.

Improving national ranking is an increasingly important issue for university administrators. While research has been conducted on performance measures in higher education, research designs have lacked a predictive quality. Studies on the U.S. News college rankings have provided insight into the methodology; however, none of them have provided a model to predict what change in variable values would likely cause an institution to improve its standing in the rankings. The purpose of this study was to develop a predictive model for benchmarking academic programs (pBAP) for engineering colleges. The 2005 U.S. News ranking data for graduate engineering programs were used to create a four-tier predictive model (pBAP). The pBAP model correctly classified 81.9% of the cases in their respective tier. To test the predictive accuracy of the pBAP model, the 2005 U.S .News data were entered into the pBAP variate developed using the 2004 U.S. News data. The model predicted that 88.9% of the institutions would remain in the same ranking tier in the 2005 U.S. News rankings (compared with 87.7% in the actual data), and 11.1% of the institutions would demonstrate tier movement (compared with an actual 12.3% movement in the actual data). The likelihood of improving an institution's standing in the rankings was greater when increasing the values of 3 of the 11 variables in the U.S. News model: peer assessment score, recruiter assessment score, and research expenditures.