Rankings of colleges and universities in the popular press have two problems: (1) they are gimmicks to sell publications; and (2) institutions have become pawns, juggling numbers in quest of higher rankings, the ethical equivalent of cheating. Higher education must return to truth, fairness, and honesty to regain its purpose and integrity. (MSE)

This article presents a keynote address delivered by Al Gini, Professor of Business Ethics in the School of Business Administration at Loyola University in Chicago, at the University Continuing Education Association (UCEA) 93rd Annual Conference, March 26, 2008, New Orleans, Louisiana, on the topic of "Liberal Education in an Interdependent…

The "Flexner Report" of 1910, which described 155 U.S. and Canadian medical schools, is discussed, along with its influence on later studies of academic quality. Scholars almost universally agree that the Flexner Report dramatically changed the nature of medical education in the United States, although they disagree about how this…

In response to the controversial college rankings published in national magazines, Stanford University (California) has posted some of the statistics used in the "U.S. News and World Report" on its World Wide Web site. It encourages other institutions to do the same to make the information readily available without the perceived…

Biographies of 177 American nursing leaders who were born before 1890 r deceased by 1988 were analyzed to identify commonalities in their backgrounds. Similarities in background characteristics were found when they were compared with achievers of Renaissance Italy, eighteenth-century Scotland, and nineteenth-century German Jews. (Author/MLW)

Prestige-suggestion, the effect that the prestige or reputation of a source has on a receiver, is the subject of this paper. Three research studies which have been done recently by researchers in reading are reported. These studies asked the following questions: If consumers evaluate products by means of reading store advertisements, will they be…

The factors that played a major role in the rapid improvement of academic departments at eight major research universities are explored. Five improvement strategies are identified: departmental hiring practices, funding, leadership, strategic planning, and overall institutional reputation. (Author/MLW)

The plan adopted in this study has been: (1) to make a correlation between the ranking of the various States in each of the items compared; and (2) to compare the various States with each other directly with a reference to the mean of the entire United States in those items. The Pearson coefficient of correlation points out the approximate degree…

A discussion of the National Research Council's 1995 ranking of research-doctorate programs in the United States criticizes the report for what it does not address, particularly comparisons with the information it disseminated in a 1982 report, some data discrepancies, and central issues such as an institution's available methods of instruction,…

Quality rankings of undergraduate institutions and programs do exist although they are hard to find and often ignored. The accuracy of these ratings and how they can be improved are discussed. (MLW)

The five-volume Assessment of Research-Doctorate Programs in the United States, the most authoritative academic quality ranking ever done, is discussed. The Assessment covers 2,699 programs in 32 disciplines and assesses a faculty's reputation for scholarly quality. Improvements in programs' reputations are also discussed. (MLW)

Examines the adequacy of descriptions of counseling psychology and its professionals in introductory psychology textbooks compared to the descriptions of other applied areas of psychology. Results indicate that counseling psychology is less represented than industrial or organizational and clinical psychology and more represented than school…

A 1994 "U.S. News and World Report" ranking of professional schools of social work is examined and compared with the findings of 8 other attempts to rank social work schools in the last 20 years. Results indicate that the assessment measures used were primarily faculty products (for example, articles published), and that the reputational…

The use of a semantic differential measure to investigate the institutional image of Tufts University (Massachusetts), both internal and external, is reported. The study focused on (1) differences between the current and desired image, and (2) differences among alumni, current student, and other constituencies' views of the institution.…

Reports an exploratory study of the relationship between faculty publishing rates in basic and applied-research journals and institutional ranking based on 1995 data for 1,318 four-year colleges and universities. Results reveal a strong, positive association between scholarship and institutional ranking, with some interesting exceptions. (MSE)