IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/ecoedu/v28y2009i2p237-248.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

University decision making and prestige: An empirical study

Author

Listed:
  • Cyrenne, Philippe
  • Grant, Hugh

Abstract

In this paper, we examine the factors that influence the reputation or prestige of universities. We first develop a model of university behaviour which indicates how the decisions made by university officials would be chosen in order to maximize their respective reputations. In doing so, we assume that reputation is enhanced by the quality of students produced, the caliber of research and the service provided to the community in terms of the provision of publicly funded education services. We argue that the relative weights placed on these intermediate outputs may vary by university type as well as the means of producing them. Using the results of the reputational survey - a ranking of the institution in terms of reputation - conducted as part of the Canadian magazine Maclean's overall ranking exercise, we then estimate an Error Correction--Ordered Probit Model of the rankings of Canadian universities to determine the factors that influence the change in reputation or "prestige" of the university as viewed by the external community. We find evidence that the change in reputation of a university is based on what might be considered the appropriate "signals" that one might use in estimating the respective quality of the institution given the respective differences in mission.

Suggested Citation

  • Cyrenne, Philippe & Grant, Hugh, 2009. "University decision making and prestige: An empirical study," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 28(2), pages 237-248, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:ecoedu:v:28:y:2009:i:2:p:237-248
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0272-7757(08)00087-3
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Charles T. Clotfelter, 1996. "Buying the Best: Cost Escalation in Elite Higher Education," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number clot96-1, March.
    2. Sophia Rabe-Hesketh & Anders Skrondal & Andrew Pickles, 2004. "GLLAMM Manual," U.C. Berkeley Division of Biostatistics Working Paper Series 1160, Berkeley Electronic Press.
    3. Banerjee, Anindya & Dolado, Juan J. & Galbraith, John W. & Hendry, David, 1993. "Co-integration, Error Correction, and the Econometric Analysis of Non-Stationary Data," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780198288107, Decembrie.
    4. Gordon C. Winston, 1999. "Subsidies, Hierarchy and Peers: The Awkward Economics of Higher Education," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 13(1), pages 13-36, Winter.
    5. Mueller, Richard E. & Rockerbie, Duane, 2005. "Determining demand for university education in Ontario by type of student," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 24(4), pages 469-483, August.
    6. Mora, Nada, 2006. "Sovereign credit ratings: Guilty beyond reasonable doubt?," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 30(7), pages 2041-2062, July.
    7. Rothschild, Michael & White, Lawrence J, 1995. "The Analytics of the Pricing of Higher Education and Other Services in Which the Customers Are Inputs," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 103(3), pages 573-586, June.
    8. Rabe-Hesketh, Sophia & Skrondal, Anders & Pickles, Andrew, 2005. "Maximum likelihood estimation of limited and discrete dependent variable models with nested random effects," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 128(2), pages 301-323, October.
    9. Alogoskoufis, George & Smith, Ron, 1991. "On Error Correction Models: Specification, Interpretation, Estimation," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 5(1), pages 97-128.
    10. Cohn, Elchanan & Rhine, Sherrie L W & Santos, Maria C, 1989. "Institutions of Higher Education as Multi-product Firms: Economies of Scale and Scope," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 71(2), pages 284-290, May.
    11. Ehrenberg, R.G.Ronald G., 2004. "Econometric studies of higher education," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 121(1-2), pages 19-37.
    12. Qi Kong & Michael R. Veall, 2005. "Does the Maclean's Ranking Matter?," Canadian Public Policy, University of Toronto Press, vol. 31(3), pages 231-242, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Marcel Clermont & Alexander Dirksen & Barbara Scheidt & Dirk Tunger, 2017. "Citation metrics as an additional indicator for evaluating research performance? An analysis of their correlations and validity," Business Research, Springer;German Academic Association for Business Research, vol. 10(2), pages 249-279, October.
    2. Mira Fischer & Patrick Kampkötter, 2017. "Effects of German Universities' Excellence Initiative on Ability Sorting of Students and Perceptions of Educational Quality," Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (JITE), Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, vol. 173(4), pages 662-687, December.
    3. Marconi, G. & Ritzen, J.M.M., 2014. "Money counts for a Times Higher Education top-rank," ROA Research Memorandum 006, Maastricht University, Research Centre for Education and the Labour Market (ROA).
    4. Marcel Clermont & Frank Baumgärtner & Alexander Dirksen, 2017. "Analyse der Einflussfaktoren auf die Forschungsreputation betriebswirtschaftlicher Fachbereiche in Deutschland [Analysis of Influencing Factors on the Research Reputation of Business Schools in Ger," Schmalenbach Journal of Business Research, Springer, vol. 69(3), pages 345-379, September.
    5. de Mesnard, Louis, 2012. "On some flaws of university rankings: The example of the SCImago report," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 41(5), pages 495-499.
    6. Mario González-Sauri & Giulia Rossello, 2023. "The Role of Early-Career University Prestige Stratification on the Future Academic Performance of Scholars," Research in Higher Education, Springer;Association for Institutional Research, vol. 64(1), pages 58-94, February.
    7. Abe, Yasumi & Watanabe, Satoshi P., 2012. "A NEW APPROACH TO ANALYZING UNIVERSITY PRESTIGE AND INTERNAL RESOURCE ALLOCATION: Geometric Interpretations and Implications," University of California at Berkeley, Center for Studies in Higher Education qt2tz763xp, Center for Studies in Higher Education, UC Berkeley.
    8. Luana dos Santos Fraga & Tatiane Pelegrini & Izete Pengo Bagolin, 2022. "The Factors Influencing Intergenerational Mobility Levels among Higher Education Graduates in Brazil: A Comparison of the Years 2004 and 2018," Journal of Social and Development Sciences, AMH International, vol. 13(1), pages 59-71.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Elizabeth Becker & Cotton M. Lindsay & Gary Grizzle, 2003. "The derived demand for faculty research," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 24(8), pages 549-567.
    2. Martin D. Dooley & A. Abigail Payne & A. Leslie Robb, 2012. "The impact of cost on the choice of university: evidence from Ontario," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 45(2), pages 755-783, May.
    3. Shao, Ling, 2014. "Estimating the relationship between calculated financial need and actual aid received using quarter of birth instruments," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 165-174.
    4. Philippe Cyrenne & Hugh Grant, 2012. "Modeling the Optimization Problem of a Public University," Departmental Working Papers 2012-02, The University of Winnipeg, Department of Economics.
    5. Polishchuk, L., 2010. "Collective Reputation in Higher Education: An Equilibrium Model," Journal of the New Economic Association, New Economic Association, issue 7, pages 46-69.
    6. Dahlia K. Remler & Elda Pema, 2009. "Why do Institutions of Higher Education Reward Research While Selling Education?," NBER Working Papers 14974, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Pablo A. Peña, 2010. "Pricing in the Not-for-Profit Sector: Can Wealth Growth at American Colleges Explain Chronic Tuition Increases?," Journal of Human Capital, University of Chicago Press, vol. 4(3), pages 242-273.
    8. Robert E. Martin, 2011. "The College Cost Disease," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 14179.
    9. E. Han Kim & Min Zhu, 2010. "Universities as Firms: The Case of US Overseas Programs," NBER Chapters, in: American Universities in a Global Market, pages 163-201, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Caroline M. Hoxby, 2009. "The Changing Selectivity of American Colleges," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 23(4), pages 95-118, Fall.
    11. Gordon C. Winston, 1997. "Why Can't a College be More Like a Firm?," Williams Project on the Economics of Higher Education DP-42, Department of Economics, Williams College.
    12. Gordon Winston & David Zimmerman, 2004. "Peer Effects in Higher Education," NBER Chapters, in: College Choices: The Economics of Where to Go, When to Go, and How to Pay For It, pages 395-424, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    13. De Fraja, Gianni & Landeras, Pedro, 2006. "Could do better: The effectiveness of incentives and competition in schools," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 90(1-2), pages 189-213, January.
    14. Tommaso Agasisti & Aleksei Egorov & Pavel Serebrennikov, 2020. "How Do The Characteristics Of The Environment Influence University Efficiency? Evidence From A Conditional Efficiency Approach," HSE Working papers WP BRP 238/EC/2020, National Research University Higher School of Economics.
    15. Nicole M. Baran & Paola Sapienza & Luigi Zingales, 2010. "Can we infer social preferences from the lab? Evidence from the trust game," NBER Working Papers 15654, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    16. Joan Rosselló Villalonga, 2013. "Stratification of Public Universities and Students’ Segregation," Hacienda Pública Española / Review of Public Economics, IEF, vol. 205(2), pages 99-124, June.
    17. Michael Kaganovich, 2012. "Reform of Higher Education Finance and Access to College in Russia," ifo DICE Report, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, vol. 10(4), pages 54-61, December.
    18. Kaganovich, Michael & Sarpca, Sinan & Su, Xuejuan, 2020. "Competition in Higher Education," Working Papers 2020-3, University of Alberta, Department of Economics.
    19. Robert J. Gary-Bobo & Alain Trannoy, 2005. "Efficient Tuition & Fees, Examinations, and Subsidies," IDEP Working Papers 0501, Institut d'economie publique (IDEP), Marseille, France, revised 01 Mar 2005.
    20. Ann M. Gansemer‐Topf & Peter F. Orazem & Darin R. Wohlgemuth, 2021. "Do liberal arts colleges maximize profit?," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 88(1), pages 274-294, July.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:ecoedu:v:28:y:2009:i:2:p:237-248. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/econedurev .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.