You might think that education quality or even research quality would be the most important aspect of an American Educational Institution. This, however, does not seem to be the case among most major universities. According to Christopher C. Morphew and Barrett J. Taylor, “[m]aintaining your institutional status in higher education” has become the most important task among universities. They have become obsessed with rankings and popularity and go to extremes to protect the institutions image. Morphew and Taylor state that most universities change their mission statements when submitting them to US News & World Report in the hopes of boosting their rankings. Some have even participated in questionable events in order to be the best at something. Universities constantly work on improving their public image by doing things which look good on the surface and do not require much sacrifice of money or time.
The universities’ focus on popularity and surface improvements has caused problems like the environment and educational improvements to be shallowly dealt with. A university may implement some short term program that temporarily fixes a problem while vastly improving the university’s public image and therefore their rankings. Because of universities obsession with rankings these problems are being ignored or left for future administrations to deal with.
Rankings are great for television shows, sports, and even politicians but they have no place in higher education. A large lack of focus results, causing slackened education standards and an overall lowered quality of education. The modern universities need to shift their focus from numbers to what is really important.
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