"U.S. News and World Report's" "Best Law Schools" dominate the conversation on quality in legal education. Despite their popularity, the criteria used to rank schools often has little to do with the quality of the educational experience. If rankings are intended to demonstrate quality, then these measures should be related with…

Widespread attention to college tuition and student loan debt has resulted in increasing scrutiny of high levels of compensation for college and university administrators. Prior research has sought to identify a "pay for performance" relationship in executive compensation, but discovered no clear link between presidential salaries and…

College rankings have become a powerful influence in higher education. While the determinants of educational quality are not clearly defined, college rankings designate an institution's standing in a numerical order based on quantifiable measurements that focus primarily on institutional resources. Previous research has identified the…

Using a conceptual model, this study examines the variables associated with the "U.S. News and World Report" peer assessment ratings of graduate and professional schools in business, education, engineering, law, and medicine. What are the correlates of prestige among the nation's leading graduate and professional schools, and are they consistent…

Through the lens of the emerging economic theory of higher education, we look at the relationship between salary and prestige. Starting from the premise that academic institutions seek to maximize prestige, we hypothesize that monetary rewards are higher for faculty activities that confer prestige. We use data from the 1999 National Study of…