Signaling effect of university rankings - An empirical study among first-year students of business and economics

In recent years, university rankings have become very popular in Germany, specifically in the fields of business and economics, and have attracted increasing research interest. However, there has been little research on the general influence of rankings on students’ choices of institutions of higher education or on how certain personality characteristics of university applicants may affect that influence. In this paper, we examine the theoretical perspectives of the effects of rankings and then present results from an empirical survey of 1,314 freshmen students of business and economics.

19.12.2014 | Roland Happ, Manuel Förster, Olga Zlatkin-Troitschanskaia (Mainz), Michael-Jörg Oesterle & Stefan Doetsch (Stuttgart)