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.

As higher education becomes ever more universalised, and an increasingly fundamental driver in development of both human and technological capital, the need to assess and compare these capabilities has become an important feature of 21st century academia. Public debate over universities has crystallised around universities rankings. This dissertation explains the rise of the three main global university rankings and their relevance to universities on the periphery, in this case the Universidade de São Paulo. By looking first at their theoretical context and then at their methodological limitations, the dissertation shows that these rankings are inadequate measures of performance for modern research universities, and do not provide realistic or desirable goals for universities outside of the Anglo-American system. However, they do point to a variety of weaknesses within USP\'s system of evaluation, which are addressed with suggestions on how to improve evaluation. The final section builds on the incipient benchmarking movement to suggest a variety of different ways USP can engage with the need to compare and evaluate without the pitfalls of universal rankings. / Enquanto o ensino superior torna-se cada vez mais universalizado, e um fator determinante em desenvolvimento, tanto humano, quanto tecnológico, a necessidade de avaliar e comparar capacidades tornou-se um aspecto chave da academia no século XXI. O debate público sobre as universidades cristalizou-se no tema dos rankings. Esta dissertação busca explicar a predominância dos três maiores rankings globais, e sua relevância para as universidades de países emergentes, neste caso a Universidade de São Paulo. Analisando primeiro o seu contexto teórico e depois as suas limitações metodológicas, o trabalho revela que esses rankings são medidas inadequadas de desempenho para instituições modernas de pesquisa, e não fornecem nem metas realistas nem desejáveis para universidades fora do sistema Anglo-Americano. Todavia, os rankings apontam as várias ineficiências no sistema atualmente utilizado pela USP, e a necessidade de mudanças. A parte final propõe, com base num movimento incipiente de \"benchmarking\", alternativas a serem exploradas pela USP tendo em vista um maior engajamento na comparação internacional para sua avaliação, sem as armadilhas inerentes dos rankings.

The purpose of this study was first to determine factors associated with intellectual reputation, specifically among selected biomedical departments worldwide within the university setting. Second, the study aimed to examine intellectual reputation in relationship to doctoral graduates’ productivity in the biomedical sciences and in relationship to organizational biomedical advancement and productivity. Third, the study aimed to visualize a spatial relationship between intellectual reputation and local organizational biomedical advancement and productivity in the United States and the United Kingdom. Finally, a simulated research-based model was proposed for understanding hospital productivity. The study used quantitative analysis in order to achieve these goals. The Geographic Information System (GIS) and Geocommons were used to visualize possible relationship between universities and hospitals in different regions. The findings from this study suggest that the university’s research intensity, having a Nobel Laureate on staff, Hirsch Index of the most prominent researcher on staff, scientific patent, scientific publications, and affiliation with multiple countries are good predictors of intellectual reputation. Correlation analysis suggests that university intellectual reputation is associated with doctoral graduates’ productivity. When examining the relationship between the university and hospitals, university intellectual reputation was positively correlated with hospital biomedical advancement, r= .445, p =0.001. Hospital productivity was significantly correlated with university intellectual reputation, r= .322, p =0.001. University intellectual reputation was significantly correlated with hospital capacity to absorb knowledge (r= 0.211, p =0.005) and knowledge spillover (r=.242, p =0.001). Regression analysis reveals that hospital capacity to absorb knowledge and knowledge spillover are good predictors of hospital biomedical advancement, F (2, 176) = 52.637, p = 0.001. Hospital capacity to absorb knowledge, affiliation with a university, intellectual reputation of the affiliated university, and distance between the hospital and the affiliated university were shown to be good predictors to hospital productivity, F (4, 106) = 11.115, p = 0.001. Visual examination of the hospitals suggests that when the universities publish at a large quantity, this tends to influence the hospitals within the area to publish a large quantity as well. Additionally, hospitals that are more productive tend to cluster around universities with higher intellectual reputation. / Includes bibliography. / Dissertation (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2014. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

Submitted by SBI Biblioteca Digital (sbi.bibliotecadigital@puc-campinas.edu.br) on 2018-12-18T12:44:05Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Armando Gon?alves.pdf: 5332190 bytes, checksum: 448d95c5ed88794f5d3a51515e91ba1d (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2018-12-18T12:44:05Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Armando Gon?alves.pdf: 5332190 bytes, checksum: 448d95c5ed88794f5d3a51515e91ba1d (MD5) Previous issue date: 2017-10-11 / Academic rankings, indexes, and international, regional and national classifications are phenomena present in higher education since the 20th century and have been expanding in the 21st century with the presence of the global rankings of Shanghai University and the British newspaper The Times. Brazil participates intensively in this trend, both following the performance of its higher education institutions (IES) in the global rankings and producing its national public rankings, from the indicators of the National System of Evaluation of Higher Education (SINAES), and private, as those of the Student Guide (GE) and the University University Ranking (RUF). However, the country has previously had a pioneering academic ranking at the national level of IES, which was published for 19 consecutive years, in a monthly magazine of high circulation of Editora Abril: the ranking Best Faculty of Brazil (RMFB) of Playboy. This research aimed to investigate the trajectory of the RMFB private academic ranking of Editora Abril in the Playboy magazine, from conception to its closure, between the years of 1981 and 2000. In view of the still reduced specific literature in Brazil, this research was contextualized in a state of the art regarding academic rankings and their implications for HEIs around the world, in the light of international scientific literature, which subsidized the understanding of the role of academic rankings for higher education systems, studied the trajectory of the published RMFB by the Brazilian Playboy magazine, identified the main moments of its public trajectory, from its conception in 1981 until its closure in the year 2000, verified aspects of Brazilian higher education present in the reports associated with the RMFB, observed the pioneering of this national academic ranking in Brazil and in the world, and finally raised the methodological aspects and analyzed its main published results along the RMFB trajectory. It is a fundamentally qualitative research that has carried out a methodological triangulation between bibliographical and documentary analyzes and also through semistructured interviews, articulated in order to produce a greater analytical completeness of the phenomenon studied to reach the research objectives. As conclusions of this work we have observed academic rankings expanding in quantity and relevance since the 1980s to our days and all over the world, Brazil as having the first national academic ranking through the Playboy RMFB while the scientific literature still attributes this fact to the US News magazine's America's Best Colleges (RABC) ranking, the journal's team with extensive dialogue with the main actors of Brazilian higher education, and the ranking tables published by this ranking demonstrating a dominance of the University of S?o Paulo ( USP) in the first places of the courses surveyed in most of the 19 editions of the RMFB. / Rankings acad?micos, ?ndices e tabelas classificat?rias internacionais, regionais e nacionais s?o fen?menos presentes na educa??o superior desde o s?culo XX e que v?m se expandindo neste s?culo XXI, com a presen?a dos rankings globais da Universidade de Shangai e do jornal brit?nico The Times. O Brasil participa intensamente desta tend?ncia, tanto acompanhando o desempenho de suas institui??es de ensino superior (IES) nos rankings globais quanto produzindo seus rankings nacionais p?blicos, a partir dos indicadores do Sistema Nacional de Avalia??o da Educa??o Superior (SINAES), e privados, como os do Guia do Estudante (GE) e do Ranking Universit?rio Folha (RUF). No entanto, o pa?s teve anteriormente um ranking acad?mico pioneiro em ?mbito nacional de IES, que foi publicado por 19 anos consecutivos, em uma revista mensal de elevada tiragem da Editora Abril: o ranking Melhores Faculdade do Brasil (RMFB) de Playboy. Esta pesquisa teve como objetivo geral investigar a trajet?ria do ranking acad?mico privado RMFB da Editora Abril na revista Playboy, desde sua concep??o at? seu encerramento, entre os anos de 1981 a 2000. Diante da ainda reduzida literatura espec?fica no Brasil, esta pesquisa foi contextualizada em um estado da quest?o a respeito dos rankings acad?micos e de suas implica??es para as IES em todo o mundo, ? luz da literatura cient?fica internacional, que subsidiou o entendimento do papel dos rankings acad?micos para os sistemas de educa??o superior, estudou a trajet?ria do RMFB publicado pela revista Playboy brasileira, identificou os principais momentos de sua trajet?ria p?blica, desde sua concep??o em 1981 at? seu encerramento no ano 2000, verificou aspectos da educa??o superior brasileira presentes nas reportagens associadas ao RMFB, observou o pioneirismo deste ranking acad?mico nacional no Brasil e no mundo e, finalmente, levantou os aspectos metodol?gicos e analisou seus principais resultados publicados ao longo da trajet?ria do RMFB. Trata-se de uma pesquisa fundamentalmente qualitativa e que realizou uma triangula??o metodol?gica entre an?lises bibliogr?ficas, documentais e tamb?m por meio de entrevistas semiestruturadas, articuladas de forma a produzir uma maior completude anal?tica do fen?meno estudado para atingir os objetivos da pesquisa. Como conclus?es desse trabalho observou-se os rankings acad?micos expandindo-se em quantidade e relev?ncia desde a d?cada de 1980 at? nossos dias e por todo o mundo, o Brasil como tendo o primeiro ranking acad?mico nacional por meio do RMFB da Playboy enquanto a literatura cient?fica ainda atribui esse fato ao ranking America?s Best Colleges (RABC) da revista U.S. News, a equipe da revista com amplo di?logo junto aos principais atores da educa??o superior brasileira, e as tabelas classificat?rias publicadas por esse ranking demonstrando uma domin?ncia da Universidade de S?o Paulo (USP) nos primeiros lugares dos cursos pesquisados na maior parte das 19 edi??es do RMFB.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-04T18:33:21Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 CARLOS MARSHAL FRANCA.pdf: 1201605 bytes, checksum: a2ea2b2e561699418ed58da6484ec2d3 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2015-02-27 / The last decades have been witnessing a centrality space to the so-called university rankings in Brazil, Ibero-american countries and the world, generated by official government institutes (public rankings) or from evaluations conducted by non-governmental agencies, often linked to media-segment companies (private rankings). The rising of the private rankings may be interpreted as result of the institutionalization process of an educational market of university education articulated to a moment in which remodeling processes of the National States are taking place and, intensified from the 1990 decade on, would have begun to operate based on principles typical of a market logic. The observation of the Ibero-american scenario allowed to identify three private rankings (50 Carreras - Los Mejores Centros Universit?rios; Ranking de Calidad de l?s Universidades Chilenas; and Ranking Universit?rio Folha RUF), generated and disseminated by press-media vehicles widely distributed in three important countries: El Mundo, in Spain; El Mercurio, in Chile; and Folha de S?o Paulo, in Brazil. The core objective of this work consists of studying these three private university rankings from a Compared Education perspective, aiming to understand their trajectory, functioning and the methodology employed to formulate them. The results of this investigation indicate that the scientific production concerning the rankings in the Iberoamerican space still is incipient. The comparative analysis conducted with the referred rankings showed closeness and separation points among them concerning the role performed by private rankings generated by newspapers of wide reach, the way each one addresses the issue of the complexity and diversity of the university national systems and the degree of objectivity or subjectivity from which their indicators are built. / As ?ltimas d?cadas v?m testemunhando um espa?o de centralidade para os chamados rankings universit?rios no Brasil, nos pa?ses ibero-americanos e no mundo, produzidos por inst?ncias governamentais oficiais (rankings p?blicos) ou a partir de avalia??es realizadas por ag?ncias n?o governamentais, vinculadas muitas vezes a empresas do segmento midi?tico (rankings privados). O surgimento de rankings privados pode ser interpretado como decorr?ncia do processo de institucionaliza??o de um mercado educacional de educa??o superior, articulado ao um momento em que se verificam processos de reforma dos Estados Nacionais que, intensificados a partir da d?cada de 1990, teriam passado a operar com base em princ?pios t?picos de uma l?gica de mercado. O exame do cen?rio ibero-americano permitiu identificar tr?s rankings privados (o 50 Carreras - Los Mejores Centros Universit?rios; o Ranking de Calidad de l?s Universidades Chilenas; e o Ranking Universit?rio Folha RUF) produzidos e disseminados por ve?culos de m?dia impressa de grande circula??o, em tr?s importantes pa?ses: o El Mundo, da Espanha; o El Mercurio, do Chile; e a Folha de S?o Paulo, do Brasil. O objetivo central do trabalho consiste em estudar, a partir de uma perspectiva da Educa??o Comparada, esses tr?s rankings universit?rios privados, buscando compreender sua trajet?ria, funcionamento e a metodologia utilizada para a formula??o dos mesmos. Os resultados desta investiga??o apontam que a produ??o cient?fica a respeito de rankings no espa?o ibero-americano ? ainda incipiente. A an?lise comparativa efetuada entre os tr?s rankings em quest?o evidenciou pontos de aproxima??o e de distanciamento entre os mesmos quanto ao papel desempenhado pelos rankings privados produzidos por jornais de grande circula??o; ? maneira como cada um deles trata a quest?o da complexidade e diversidade dos sistemas universit?rios nacionais; e quanto ao grau objetividade ou subjetividade a partir do qual s?o constru?dos seus indicadores.

China has become one of the most important players in the landscape of higher education worldwide. The nation is home to the largest tertiary sector in the world, is the leading sender of international students, the third largest receiver of international students, and its government has aggressively pushed internationalization policies at its top universities. Policymakers and educational stakeholders in China have been implementing these strategies in order to chase world-class status for the nation’s universities. While the world-class university concept is ubiquitous across the globe, there has been no agreed upon definition for these elite institutions. In China, though, rankings have been adopted to make sense of this elite status. This dissertation explores the impact that university rankings have had on the Chinese higher education system. There has been considerable research on university rankings in China, but some gaps remain. Studies have explored Chinese universities’ ambitions for world-class status, but rankings are often marginalized within these studies. Studies on the impact of university rankings have mostly focused on their connection to Chinese international students, as league tables have key tools in decision-making for this population. Conversely, research that has focused on domestic students has emphasized geographic biases in university admissions and affluence advantages in the system, and usually has not engaged with global or local rankings. To fill these gaps, my study centers university rankings within the intersection of the local and global settings. I used two original datasets to engage this exploration of how university rankings impact Chinese universities. First, I interviewed 48 faculty and staff members from the elite spectrum of the Chinese higher education sector. Through the interviews, I investigated how the concept of the world-class university relates to university rankings in China. I confirmed that these league tables have provided a concrete, commensurate indicator for decision-makers to make sense of the global higher education hierarchy, with specific cut-offs to be considered world-class. Further, I examined the intersection between global ranking ambitions of Chinese universities coupled with stringent control from the central government through the striving model. I found that while international forces have had considerable impact on these institutions, local characteristics are highly filtered through a Chinese domestic lens, as governmental distinction has dominated the focus of elite universities. Concurrently, I surveyed over 900 students from across Chinese universities in an exploration of ranking familiarity and knowledge. Through multivariate analysis, I found that students from affluent classes, elite universities, and those with study abroad ambitions were all more familiar with rankings. However, in an actual test of knowledge, I discovered that elite university students actually did worse in regards to global ranking knowledge, while the associations to affluence and study abroad ambition disappeared. The findings in this research have centered rankings in a comparative perspective of higher education in China and the lessons learned can be adapted to future studies in other societies or sectors.

The undergraduate business program rankings in USNWR are based solely on peer assessments from deans and associate deans of AACSB accredited U.S. business schools. Often these reputation-based rankings are discounted and likened to a beauty pageant because the process lacks transparent input data.In this study, ten deans and ten associate deans representing top 50 USNWR undergraduate business programs were interviewed. Seven of the institutions are public and three are private and all but two universities are AAU member institutions.The research answers the following questions: how do deans and associate deans define quality in their school's undergraduate program and in other schools' programs? How are administrators influenced when evaluating the reputation of peer schools? Are competitors treated differently when evaluating academic reputation? What methods are administrators utilizing to influence brand perception with their stakeholder and educational peers?Business school deans and associate deans emphasized different aspects of an undergraduate program in their description of quality. The deans most valued quality from faculty and research. The associate deans valued the undergraduate experience including sense of community, engagement, involvement, leadership, student services, as creating distinction in a program.Business school administrators are barraged by influences that affect their perceptions about program reputations. Overall the influences on perception included quality of faculty, research, student standardized test scores, resources, characteristics of an institution, professional involvement and social networks including networks with faculty, students, other professionals and employers that provide feedback about schools. Professional involvement and social networks (PhD students, other deans, siblings, friends, students, employers, etc.) provided administrators with important insight into academic reputation. The quality of people that the administrators knew from other schools made a difference in peer schools' reputation.Finally, most schools employ integrated marketing communication (IMC) including taglines, direct marketing, event marketing, feature promotions, customer service and brand messages to influence stakeholders and peers. This study confirmed that everyone in a business school is a brand manager because brand is influenced through numbers of interactions over time with a variety of stakeholders. True to the IMC framework, business schools have moved to a relationship driven educational model.

No description available.

As higher education becomes ever more universalised, and an increasingly fundamental driver in development of both human and technological capital, the need to assess and compare these capabilities has become an important feature of 21st century academia. Public debate over universities has crystallised around universities rankings. This dissertation explains the rise of the three main global university rankings and their relevance to universities on the periphery, in this case the Universidade de São Paulo. By looking first at their theoretical context and then at their methodological limitations, the dissertation shows that these rankings are inadequate measures of performance for modern research universities, and do not provide realistic or desirable goals for universities outside of the Anglo-American system. However, they do point to a variety of weaknesses within USP\'s system of evaluation, which are addressed with suggestions on how to improve evaluation. The final section builds on the incipient benchmarking movement to suggest a variety of different ways USP can engage with the need to compare and evaluate without the pitfalls of universal rankings. / Enquanto o ensino superior torna-se cada vez mais universalizado, e um fator determinante em desenvolvimento, tanto humano, quanto tecnológico, a necessidade de avaliar e comparar capacidades tornou-se um aspecto chave da academia no século XXI. O debate público sobre as universidades cristalizou-se no tema dos rankings. Esta dissertação busca explicar a predominância dos três maiores rankings globais, e sua relevância para as universidades de países emergentes, neste caso a Universidade de São Paulo. Analisando primeiro o seu contexto teórico e depois as suas limitações metodológicas, o trabalho revela que esses rankings são medidas inadequadas de desempenho para instituições modernas de pesquisa, e não fornecem nem metas realistas nem desejáveis para universidades fora do sistema Anglo-Americano. Todavia, os rankings apontam as várias ineficiências no sistema atualmente utilizado pela USP, e a necessidade de mudanças. A parte final propõe, com base num movimento incipiente de \"benchmarking\", alternativas a serem exploradas pela USP tendo em vista um maior engajamento na comparação internacional para sua avaliação, sem as armadilhas inerentes dos rankings.

No description available.