Via Paul Caron, Inside Higher Ed reports on a study published in Research in Higher Education which outlines the costs associated with a university's efforts to climb the U.S. News National University rankings. For example, what would it take for Rochester University to move from the mid-30's to the Top 20?
To move up one spot because of faculty compensation, Rochester would have to increase the average faculty salary by about $10,000. To move up one spot on resources provided to students, it would have to spend $12,000 more per student. Those two things alone would cost $112 million a year. To get into the top 20, Rochester would also have to increase its graduation rate by 2 percent, enroll more students who were in the top 10 percent of their high school graduating class, get more alumni to give, cut the acceptance rate and increase the SAT and ACT scores of incoming students. Some of those things, like offering aid money to highly qualified students, might further increase the expense. But that’s not all, the paper argues. Rochester would still have to do well in the rankings magazine’s “beauty contest.”
One big distinguisher between universities and law schools: U.S. News counts the beauty contest portion – reputation surveys – 15% for universities. But it counts reputation surveys 40% for law schools. The cost associated with moving up in those reputation surveys may also be astronomical. For example, one way to increase reputation among academics might be sustained multi-year hiring of scholarly superstars. To do this, a lower ranked school would have to pay a premium and minimize teaching loads. And to get the stars to make such a move, the school might first have to lure an expensive superstar dean who would lend credibility to the school's long term commitment to the superstar project. For all that, it's by no mean clear that these hires would improve the student experience (except insofar as a higher rank would achieve that.)