Issue link: http://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/438743
48 BizEd JANUARY | FEBRUARY 2015 Over the past twO decades, pOliticians and educatiOn experts have called fOr refOrms that would help stakeholders make more informed choices about the value of a college degree and promote increased accountability for universities. For instance, in 2013, U.S. President Barack Obama proposed a national database with a dual focus on col- lege affordability and career outcomes. In 2006, U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings commissioned a report calling for "greater transparency and accountability for measuring institutional performance." Here, too, the report called for a consumer database that would allow stakeholders to compare institutions on a variety of factors. Although many university leaders agree that schools must adopt innova- tive measures to cut spiraling costs and provide consumers with useful compar- ative data, they generally have shown resistance to these proposals. We believe their resistance is well-justified. Most systems tend to reflect only a small part of what a school might consider its core mission. For instance, a school rated as relatively "expensive" might use the higher tuition dollars to create a very personalized educational environment. For the students who would flourish in such an environment, and only such an environment, the high tuition would be worth the price. In this case, a system that only captures costs without measur- ing the educational environment would paint an unfair picture. As Malcolm Gladwell recently ob- served, all evaluation systems "enshrine particular ideologies" of the individuals who create them, thereby placing a high priority on some stakeholder needs and ignoring others. Unless they consider the myriad factors that make higher educa- tion valuable to various stakeholders, most systems will continue to be met with resistance. We have spent the last few years trying to understand the perils and promises of creating a workable evaluation system for business schools. We know firsthand that it's a daunting undertaking, but we also know that it can be done. A COMPREHENSIVE RATING SYSTEM Business schools already have spent decades under the tyranny of a highly deficient evaluation system: the media rankings. Rankings typically reflect very limited information, such as starting sal- aries, student satisfaction, and student test scores. In some cases, only one or two of these factors are used to deter- mine a school's ranking. This focus on a narrow slice of business school quality has spawned decades of well-docu- mented dysfunction. Schools divert critical resources away from educational initiatives in favor of managing their impressions in the marketplace and courting recruiters so they can improve their ranking scores. This is not exactly the kind of educational reform a quality Can business schools gain consensus on a new rating system REDEFINING