IPE Interview 1 - Randall Reback

The guest on the show is Professor Randall Reback from Barnard College. He discusses the impact of college rankings on student applications and institutional dynamics. Non-pecuniary benefits like campus appearance and happiness influence rankings. High school students are influenced by peer institutions and the lifestyle a college offers. Rankings have high stakes for universities and students. Universities face challenges in maintaining accurate and unbiased information when responding to inquiries from organizations like the Princeton Review. Barnard College and other schools have withheld information due to concerns about how statistics are used. The impact of rankings on applications is small, but visibility and donations can be affected. The government's involvement in rankings is through research grants and a government-sponsored website provides information on net tuition costs and future earnings. The relationship between rankings and resources is unclear, and there are no obse Welcome to Research and Rating, the show where we delve deep into the fascinating world of higher education, exploring the intricacies and impact of college rankings on student application and institutional dynamics. I'm your host, Adrian, and today we have a distinguished guest who brings a wealth of knowledge to this topic. Joining us today is Professor Randall Reback. Is that how you pronounce your last name? That's right. From Barnard College and the co-author of The Enlightening Study, True for Your School, How Changing Reputations Alter for Selective U.S. Colleges. Professor Reback, thank you for being with us today. Happy to be here. Thanks, Adrian. So I guess my first question, Professor, your research sheds light on the profound impact of college rankings throughout the article, specifically on application numbers and the academic competitiveness of incoming classes, touching upon the concept of what you call non-pecuniary benefits influencing rankings, such as happiness and campus appearance. How do you think these factors come into play and what role do they play in shaping a college's reputation and, consequently, its application numbers? Yeah, I think there's sort of two stages at which they come to play. So the non-pecuniary factors are everything associated with a college that you wouldn't be able to immediately put into monetary terms in terms of how much it's worth. So things other than tuition, financial aid, and the future return, their income and earnings. So things like we think, you know, there's a beautiful campus and nice gyms, nice facilities, things like that. I think it's two stages. So at the first stage of the search, a lot of high school students are deciding broadly what types of colleges they're interested in. And I think sometimes having one or more peer institutions catch their eye, whether it's making a top 20 list or talking to a friend who goes there or watching something on a sporting event or something else on the Internet or television. And then from there, they're interested in sort of the lifestyle that that college has to offer, and it gets them to explore that and what they see as sort of a similar set of schools, whether that means Midwest liberal arts colleges, Northeast large universities, et cetera. Yeah. Yeah. And then the next stage that can matter, of course, is the actual decision of among the places where they're admitted off recognition, where do they decide to enroll? Yeah. So I think then it's pretty safe to say that the rankings are pretty high stakes for both the administration of the university and the students themselves, of course. And it seems like what you described about U.S. News and Princeton Review, they have very limited measures, primarily quantitative. Could you explain the challenges universities face in maintaining accurate and unbiased information, especially when responding to inquiries from organizations like the Princeton Review? Sure. And there's been a lot of controversy around reporting, particularly schools historically were more obsessed with the U.S. News rankings because it literally ranks everyone in only one order, whereas the Princeton Review had more general rankings that were a lot more vague in terms of what the formula was for them. Yeah, yeah. So schools are not really directly reporting, at least in the past, were not directly reporting to Princeton Review. None of that's changed. Princeton Review was using a combination of publicly available information and student surveys, which were sort of done not necessarily in a very formal fashion, but they would have a team talk to some students at the colleges, whereas U.S. News, it was a very formal reporting out. And colleges were aware or could infer what variables mattered to U.S. News, and it actually should have changed the college's own behavior, like they might decide they wanted to strategically be more wary or conscious of certain things, such as reported class sizes or reported yield rates, in order to change their rankings in the U.S. News. Yeah, yeah. That makes sense. I mean, yeah, it seems like from what you described in the article, it was very, it was pretty easy to, it was not necessarily, I guess, fact-checked because the institutions themselves were reporting it, and especially, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, for the U.S. News, that's absolutely right. There's been controversy over some accuracy of the statistics. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And I know that's why some colleges, like yours, actually, I think Columbia decided to, or Barnard College, I'm assuming, as part of Columbia, decided to kind of withhold some information, right? Yeah, so Barnard is the women's liberal arts college affiliated with Columbia. So it's actually a separate decision, where Barnard would be in a different category, in fact. It would be in the liberal arts rankings. That awkward pause is a great time to hear a word from our sponsors. Of course, the time of your life. But wait, are you feeling lost? Confused? Terrified about your future? Fear not, because we have the ultimate solution for you, the college counselor. Welcome to the world of unheralded science. Our college counselors are here to help you navigate the treacherous waters of college application, because who else will tell you what you already know? I know how to Google. 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Yeah, Barnard and other schools were increasingly uncomfortable with the way some of the statistics were used and some concerns of the formula sort of changing arbitrarily just to have the rankings change in order to create some buzz, I guess. Yeah. That's right. What's interesting, though, is even though the schools seem to be quite concerned about these U.S. news rankings, from my study with Molly Alter and other studies, the actual impact on applications and the change of the class pool is pretty small when you're only talking about moving up or down a few ranks. What really would matter is things like whether you make a top 20 list or are featured on the first page list of the U.S. News Review. Yeah. That kind of thing can really move the chain in terms of visibility. It might affect donations, but in terms of applications, not too much of an effect, actually, from moving from, let's say, third to sixth or something like that. Yeah, it seems very slim from what you describe. But do you think – I get that endowments might not have as much of a direct or noticeable change, but do you think that the perception and reliance on rankings by the government shaped the decision-making processes related to academic funding and resource allocation, like based on the rankings? Do you think the – It's hard to separate which comes first with some of these rankings, right? The reputation of the school sort of precedes itself. Yeah, yeah. Some of these things. And that's to some extent why rankings don't matter too much because there's some stickiness in this reputation idea. Government would be a different topic because government gets involved in two ways. I don't – whether or not people get research grants could possibly be influenced by the prestige of where they're applying from, but that's more of sort of individual committees awarding those grants sort of decisions. So they see, well, this person was at Harvard. I know Harvard very well. Yeah, yeah. So, you know, however, you know, consciously or unconsciously that affects their decision. But the other thing is things have come a long way in terms of there now being a government-sponsored website, which gives high school students a much better sense of the actual net tuition costs and future earnings associated with attending various colleges. So I would encourage people to check that out where you can do the net tuition calculator. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And what website would that be? Or just generally in the school's website? Yeah, the federal – The federal? There's a centralized site for it, yeah. Oh, oh, okay. Yeah. Well, kind of building off of what you were discussing, I think that kind of – it kind of reminds me of – I heard once about this model – sorry if it's loud in the background. You know how the city is sometimes – about the Hawksby model, which explains the relationship between third-party rankings and resources. And even though you said that it might be – like, it's unclear which – whether it's the prestige of the university coming to the government or the – making it a determining factor in the government. But, yeah, the model basically represents a cycle of greater prestige leading to greater selectivity and, in turn, higher educational quality. Have you observed any shifts in this cycle in recent years? And how might it be influencing the current economic landscape of higher education? Oh, so in terms of funding or student applications now we're talking about? I would say, yeah, in terms of research funding, yeah. That's sort of actually outside my area of expertise, so I'm not sure how – Okay, yeah. I'm not too familiar with trends in recent research funding. I'm more familiar with what's been driving student awareness and student demand when it comes to colleges. And certainly – so I did my study with Molly Alter, the True for Your School study, a decade ago. And at that time not only were the top 20 in the Princeton Review important, but the Princeton Review was this sort of peers, you know, people who like this college also often looked at some other colleges. Yeah, yeah. And what's really been the most recent change in trend is now so many high schools are using advising programs like Naviance where they actually tell people, people from your high school often consider this group of colleges. Yeah, yeah. You know, when applying, which is good and bad. It can create a sort of persistence and the narrowing of the set of colleges that people are looking at when they come from one high school because you're sort of copying what people have done in the past, but it's also good in terms of being a little more objective in terms of the data that they provide. Yeah, I can definitely speak on behalf of Naviance. It's definitely been my primary tool in that sense. Yeah. But I guess, yeah, kind of relating back to that peer reputation, have there been any notable consequences or challenges for universities that rely on such traditional measures like peer reputation rather than arbitrary kind of quantitative measures for applications, I mean, for increasing the application pool or just prestige in general? Yeah, well, what's changed, of course, is greater use of websites and social media, but some colleges feel more comfortable and adept at others in terms of getting out a consistent message. Colleges suspend also a lot of resources on visiting different parts of the world, not just the country, but part of the world to get their name out there. Barnard, for a while now, has become a lot more international in their outreach, for example, and it's paid off in terms of getting a greater number of international applicants. But really, the challenge of the day is the messaging now on the web and social media, and I think colleges, of course, can be nervous on how you, to some extent, control that message and how centralized should that be in terms of who's representing the university and representing the college. Yeah, yeah, of course. No, that makes sense. I think, yeah, that definitely, so, I mean, it definitely kind of, students are always talking about how applicants, like, a lot of their applications for applying to colleges are out of their control. Like, sometimes it might seem like it's very much based on luck, but it seems like what you're talking, what you're saying is that it's also kind of, the rankings themselves also make it kind of a game of luck for the universities themselves as well, considering that. Well, if, yeah, the dependence on different measures and social media, but yeah, thank you so much for sharing your expertise and insights on this intersection of education and evaluation. Sure, my pleasure. Yeah, thank you so much. It was great meeting you. Likewise. Stay tuned for the next episode where we discuss organizational reputation with Professor Michael Bastido. Transcribed by https://otter.ai