A Revealed Preference Ranking of U.S. Colleges and Universities / Christopher Avery, Mark Glickman, Caroline Hoxby, Andrew Metrick.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Avery, Christopher.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Glickman, Mark.

Hoxby, Caroline.

Metrick, Andrew.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w10803.

NBER working paper series no. w10803

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2004.

Summary:

We show how to construct a ranking of U.S. undergraduate programs based on students' revealed preferences. We construct examples of national and regional rankings, using hand-collected data on 3,240 high- achieving students. Our statistical model extends models used for ranking players in tournaments, such as chess or tennis. When a student makes his matriculation decision among colleges that have admitted him, he chooses which college "wins" in head-to-head competition. The model exploits the information contained in thousands of these wins and losses. Our method produces a ranking that would be difficult for a college to manipulate. In contrast, it is easy to manipulate the matriculation rate and the admission rate, which are the common measures of preference that receive substantial weight in highly publicized college rating systems. If our ranking were used in place of these measures, the pressure on colleges to practice strategic admissions would be relieved.

Notes:

Print version record

October 2004.