Self-fulfilling rankings
In this paper by Espeland and Sauder, self-fulfilling rankings are discussed in the context of “reactivity–the idea that people change their behavior in reaction to being evaluated, observed, or measured”. They discuss law school rankings until the late 1980s were prepared “for and used by academics and administrators”. Then USN started ranking colleges in 1983 for consumers instead of insiders, creating a successful business venture with the prospective students and parents who use the rankings as a measure of success. They found that rankings are reactive because people would change their behavior and justify their decisions when in school or thinking of school. Admissions directors talked about the ranking of the universities to be directly correlated with the number of students who decline to accept their admission into the school. The self-fulfilling prophecy is “a false definition of the situation evoking a new behavior which makes the originally false definition of the situation come true”. One example of this is being ranked 3rd tier of a school. The alumni are harder to “solicit to get more revenue, to have more scholarships or to have more resources to bump up the rankings. It’s a self-fulfilling nightmare.”
In this way, the USN rankings are like a hub. The rankings give authority to particular schools, and USN has the power to direct power to its authorities. Especially when the rankings link to the university page, the schools gain more authority, which in turn makes that hub stronger. We talked about rankings having a huge impact on sales and ads in class. The universities ranked higher leave a better impression that in turn changes the audience’s view of that university, which in turn leads to more intelligent students, more research, more funding, etc. In this way, the rankings are truly self-fulfilling for which universities are seen as the best and will be treated as the best.
https://www.stmarys-ca.edu/sites/default/files/attachments/files/rankings-and-reactivity-2007.pdf