<p>Hi looking forward,</p>
<p>Your redefinition of farce still seems to me not all that useful in what happens in the world of admission and enrollment management. Statistics demonstrate beyond any reasonable doubt that rankings are not ‘empty’. Quite the opposite. </p>
<p>The single most important factor students list on country wide surveys of hundreds of thousands of people demonstrate that the reputation of a school is at the top of the list of why students enroll. I have said this before, but I guess it bears repeating, since I must not be clear (that is a problem I must have given how some of the responses on many of my posts seem to stray far from my original questions), the ratings are ‘empty’ if by this you mean they do not contain statistically valid information; on the other hand, as the scandal at Emory demonstrates (and at a law school recently), schools are willing to lie, fudge, and hire lots of media people at millions of dollars to improve on the rankings. Given the potential for scandal and the current funding crises at most schools, it must seem important to them. Either that or they are simply wasteful and stupid, and for this they should be fired. I actually think they are being cagey and smart, but you may disagree.</p>
<p>They know that despite the reality of rankings being ‘empty’ in terms of content, it still matters in terms of what I will call here form. By form, in this instance I am talking about the label attached. My analogy in another post on this thread was a purse. The materials are the same, the sweatshop is the same, the workers and production values are the same, but the LV on it signifies it is ‘better’. And people buy it, literally and figuratively. </p>
<p>Am I missing your point?</p>