This paper unpacks how social science doctorate-holders come to evaluate overall excellence in their PhD training programs based on their domain-specific assessments of aspects of their programs. Latent class analysis reveals that social scientists 6-10 years beyond their PhD evaluate the quality of their doctoral program with one of two…

Institutional prestige is an inherent part of higher education in the U.S., resulting in rankings that often become the rationale for resource allocation including research grants and increased admission applications. While the desire for prestige and high rankings are important to research universities, the reality is that not all universities…

We present Bourdieu's notions of field, capital, "habitus," and strategy and how these concepts apply today in light of academic capitalism using an empirical study of faculty work in one specific field in engineering that exemplifies current tendencies brought by academic capitalism. We conclude with a discussion of practical implications.…

This article reports a study that improves the authors' understanding of the potential impact of expanded community college transfer access to elite institutions by examining a variety of key questions using two national databases with complementary strengths. By estimating the number of low-income community college students currently transferring…

Based on the belief that long-term marketing costs for colleges can be reduced by focusing on building trust, studied the antecedents to trust in students and alumni. Data collected from 250 students and alumni indicated that strategic plans that improve perceived sincerity, expertise, and congeniality of a college can be successfully used to…

The productivity of 40 major research universities in combining faculty and governmental grants to obtain reputational rankings in the 1980s is examined empirically. These productivities are measured relative to the most efficient members of the group and for their proximities to minimal costs. (Author/MLW)

The estimation of a comprehensive model describing student perceptions of college quality permits the determination of the relative importance of the influences that affect these perceptions. This knowledge is instrumental for directing efforts toward improving perceptions and for evaluating the effectiveness of changes in recruitment practices.…

The Chronicle of Higher Education recently reported on a conference of scholars and senior administrators at Harvard discussing "The Future of Religious Colleges" (McMurtrie, 2000). The irony of the meeting's venue is readily apparent. Having been founded by Puritan Christians in 1636 and soon given the motto, Christo et Ecclesiae, the beginning…

The relationship between reputational standing, productivity, and gender is explored. Contrary to the results of most studies that assign article publication a prominent role in predicting reputational standing, chapter publication rates are identified as strong and consistent predictors of reputational standing. (Author/MLW)

A study investigated the validity of eight indicators (acceptance rate, mean entrance test score, matriculants' class standing, faculty/student ratio, faculty background, instructional budget, retention, graduation rate) for assessing quality in higher education institutions. Indicators were more predictive of retention, graduation, and reputation…

Traditional approaches to defining academic quality (reputational, resources, and outcomes or value-added) are criticized as not providing useful information. An alternative perspective is offered, focusing on fundamental course-level academic processes and defining the quality of such processes as the level of understanding of course content…

Factor analysis of 127 private and public universities found that graduate and undergraduate academic reputations are largely explained by the same two factors, size and selectivity. Institutional research activity was the most essential component of the size factor. Findings suggest that reputation strongly influences college attendance choices,…