In this article, the author argues that American higher education is allowing itself to be held hostage by the rankings industry, which can lead institutions to consider actions harmful to the public interest and encourage the public's infatuation with celebrity at the expense of substance. Instead of sitting quietly by during the upcoming ratings…

Obsession with institutional image, encouraged by the yearly rankings published by a major national news magazine, has led many colleges and universities to use questionable statistics to bolster public relations efforts. Manipulative reporting goes beyond standardized test scores to include athlete graduation rates and any other image-enhancing…

The "U.S. News and World Report" rankings of colleges do not affect institutions equally; the schools impacted most are those that have the most to lose because they benefit from, even rely on, the rankings for prestige and visibility. The magazine relies on the rankings for substantial sales revenues, and has garnered considerable power…

Development and application of the Educational Institution Image Instrument, designed to assess alumni perceptions of a higher education institution, is chronicled. Results showed it is a highly reliable scale containing five significant and interpretable subdimensions when applied to a random alumni sample. Implications for image measurement and…

Although higher education institutions dislike rankings published in the mass media, they like the attention the rankings create and prefer to be included rather than excluded. Common criticisms of the methodology include emphasis on inappropriate criteria, unfair comparison of private and public institutions, faulty assumptions, inaccurate data,…