The university rankings game: Modeling the competition among universities for ranking

Rajdeep Grewal; James A. Dearden; Gary L. Lilien

doi:10.1198/000313008X332124

The university rankings game: Modeling the competition among universities for ranking

Rajdeep Grewal, James A. Dearden, Gary L. Lilien

Institute for the Study of Business Markets

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

57 Scopus citations

Abstract

With university rankings gaining both in popularity and influence, university administrators develop strategies to improve their rankings. To better understand this competition for ranking, we present an adjacent category logit model to address the localized nature of ranking competition and include lagged rank as an independent variable to account for stickiness of ranking. Calibrating our model with data from U.S. News and World Report from 1999-2006 shows persistence in ranking and identifies important interactions among university attributes and lagged rank. The model provides (lagged) rank-specific elasticities of ranks with respect to changes in university characteristics, thereby offering insight about the effect of a university's strategy on its rank.

Original language	English (US)
Pages (from-to)	232-237
Number of pages	6
Journal	American Statistician
Volume	62
Issue number	3
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1198/000313008X332124
State	Published - Aug 1 2008

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

Statistics and Probability
General Mathematics
Statistics, Probability and Uncertainty

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10.1198/000313008X332124

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The university rankings game: Modeling the competition among universities for ranking

Abstract

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

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