Complying With Commensuration: How Rankings Coordinate Resource Allocations in Higher Education

• In Event: 213 - Section on Organizations, Occupations and Work Paper Session. Power, Professions, and Movements

Abstract

While a number of studies have explored the impact of rankings within a given setting, few have compared the impact of rankings across contexts. Whereas business schools were ranked by multiple intermediaries since the early 1990s, law schools and undergraduate universities have been subject to a monopolist intermediary structure. This paper presents evidence that centralization in undergraduate and law school rankings led to a stricter status ordering between schools, whereas the fragmented intermediary structure for business schools protected against such an effect. Following the introduction of rankings, inequality in matriculation rates increased for undergraduate universities and law schools. Top schools received more of the students they accepted while lower ranked schools received less. Over the same time period, yield inequality was constant for business schools. Marginal changes in rank are shown to disproportionately affect high status schools. Results indicate that yield growth at the top end of the business school status hierarchy was moderated by disagreement between rankings. Schools are shown to respond rankings with respect to observed criteria. Law schools and national universities reduce student faculty ratios by more than 25%, whereas those of business schools remained constant. Lower ranked institutions conform to ranking criteria at the same rate as higher ranked schools, despite the fact that they receive less benefit for doing so. Together, these findings indicate how centralized intermediary structures are capable of giving rise to positional externalities, whereby the costs of complying with commensuration are primarily borne by schools with less relative standing.

Author

• Craig Tutterow, University of Chicago