Abstract
College rankings dominate the conversation regarding quality in postsecondary education. However, the criteria used to rank institutions often have nothing to do with the quality of education students receive. A decade ago, Pike (2004) demonstrated that institutional rank had little association with student involvement in educational activities. In a reprise of Pike’s research, the current study examines the relationship between three institutional ranking schemes, U.S. News, Forbes, and Washington Monthly and student engagement, as measured by the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE). Findings reveal few relationships exist between NSSE’s measures of student engagement and the three institutional ranking schemes, except for a modest negative relationship between rank and student-faculty interactions.
Highlights
Using data from the 2013 administration of the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE), multilevel models were employed to explore the relationship between student engagement and three institutional ranking schemes: U.S News, Forbes, and Washington Monthly
The current study draws on the previous work of Pike (2004) who, over a decade ago, examined the rankings of fourteen public AAU research universities and demonstrated little relationship between the levels of engagement reflected in the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) and the institution rank measured by U.S News and Word Report (USNWR)
This study draws data from over 80,000 first-year and senior students at sixty-four institutions that participated in the 2013 administration of the NSSE and includes the institution’s 2013 score for three rankings schemes: Forbes’ Top Colleges in the U.S (F-TCUS), U.S News & World Report National University Rankings (USNWR), and Washington Monthly’s National Universities Rankings (WM-NUR)
Summary
Using data from the 2013 administration of the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE), multilevel models were employed to explore the relationship between student engagement and three institutional ranking schemes: U.S News, Forbes, and Washington Monthly. The current study draws on the previous work of Pike (2004) who, over a decade ago, examined the rankings of fourteen public AAU research universities and demonstrated little relationship between the levels of engagement reflected in the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) and the institution rank measured by USNWR. A majority of these ranking schemes reside on input characteristics of students (like academic preparation) and it has been shown that these inputs can heavily influence some outcomes of institutions, like graduation (Dill & Soo, 2005) This is clear when examining the relationships between institutional selectivity and student graduation rates: institutions with higher entrance selectivity criteria tend to have higher than average four-year graduation rates. The primary research question guiding this study is: When accounting for institutional and student characteristics, is there a relationship between an institution’s rank and student engagement?
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