Nowadays, university rankings are a familiar phenomenon in higher education all over the world. But how did rankings achieve this status? To address this question, we bring in a historical-sociological perspective and conceptualize rankings as a phenomenon in history. We focus on the United States and identify the emergence of a specific…

Since "U.S. News & World Report" first published a college ranking in 1983, the rankings industry has become a self-appointed judge, declaring winners and losers among America's colleges and universities. In this revealing account, Colin Diver shows how popular rankings have induced college applicants to focus solely on pedigree and…

For two centuries, academics and their universities have competed for prominence and vied to demonstrate that their institutions are at the center of the scholarly world. Scientific advances in particular fields, reciprocal academic visits and conferences, impressive physical architecture, and publishing in shared venues and a "lingua…

Purpose: Prospective students and other stakeholders in the education system use global and national rankings as a measure of the quality of education offered by different higher educational institutions. The ranking of an Institution is seen as a measure of reputation and has a significant role in attracting students. But are students happy in…

Social media technologies (SMTs), online brand communities, and social customer relationship management (SCRM) Capabilities play an indispensable role in the engagement and loyalty-building of university students to achieve a sustainable university reputation. This study provides pioneering input for higher education institutions (HEIs) by…

The purpose of this article is to galvanize institutions toward a movement to value teaching excellence in higher education. Colleges and universities that demonstrate this value are Teaching Excellence Colleges and Universities (TECUs), but they have never acted as a group. Many of these institutions lack power in the higher education landscape.…

The current exploratory study determined the prevalence of the sport management academic degree being offered in top-ranked institutions as based on "U.S. News & World Report" rankings. A focus on the differences of bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees being offered, or not offered, was placed on national universities and…

This study reviews three university ranking methodologies: Quacquarelli Sysmonds University Rankings, The Times Higher Education World University Rankings, and the Shanghai Jiao Tong University's Academic Ranking of World Universities. It also aims to suggest two new methodologies, one for World University Ranking and one for Arab University…

AACRAO partnered with two marketing faculty members to identify how higher education institutions are marketing themselves to high school seniors and to assess whether a brand management approach is being utilized. The research also sought to identify the practices that some institutions use (if any) to achieve enrollment results that are more…

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the validity of college rankings, by investigating to what extent measurements employed by rankings are good proxies for evaluating educational practices at liberal arts colleges. Using a hierarchical linear modeling with data from the Wabash National Study of Liberal Arts Education, Integrated…

Recently, there has been an increase in the Higher Education (HE) options (in terms of both courses and institutions) available to students in the UK. Given that the choice of institution and field of study are crucial for students' future careers, we investigated how attributes of the institutions and courses determine students' choices, and how…

The present study examined the 2017 Times Higher Education annual rankings for Japanese institutions of higher learning. Based on the analytic model as mapped out previously using Canadian data, we offered a similar protocol for the top 100 institutions of higher education in Japan. Three analyses showed that: (a) overall rank correlated with…

Trademarks figure prominently in college and university brand formation efforts. Trademarks are intangible rights that allow institutions to define and protect aspects of their identities important to them as they engage in markets. This multiple-method study, grounded in legal and policy research, provides a first look at how institutions are…

Amidst global competition in higher education, colleges and universities adopt strategies that mimic and adapt business practices. Branding is now a widespread practice in higher education; multimodal advertisement is a manifestation of emerging branding strategies for universities. While the visibility of brands in higher education has grown…

There is a comprehensive literature documenting how colleges' tuition, financial aid packages, and academic reputations influence students' application and enrollment decisions. Far less is known about how quality-of-life reputations and peer institutions' reputations affect these decisions. This article investigates these issues…