A Principal Components Analysis Of The U.S. News & World Report Tier Rankings Of National Liberal Arts Colleges

Abstract

<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; margin: 0in 37.8pt 0pt 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "CG Times","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">Analyzing the relative contribution of eleven ranking criteria used to construct the 1999 </span><strong><span style="font-family: "CG Times","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">U.S. News & World Report</span></strong><span style="font-family: "CG Times","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"> (</span><span style="font-family: "CG Times","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">USNWR)<span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"> tier rankings of national universities, Webster (2000) found by utilizing principal components analysis the actual contributions differed significantly from the explicit USNWR weighting scheme.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>This difference was due to the presence of severe and pervasive multicollinearity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>Although </span>USNWR<span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"> assigns the greatest explicit weight to academic reputation, Webster found that the most significant ranking criterion was average SAT (Scholastic Aptitude Test) scores of enrolled students. This paper extends Webster's study to the </span>USNWR<span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"> tier rankings of national liberal arts colleges.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>The results of this study reinforces Webster's findings about the importance of academically related ranking criteria, although academic reputation appears to carry greater weight for national liberal arts colleges than for national universities.</span></span></p>