<p>^This is one of the best explanations of PA I have seen, although still don't think it should constitute 25% of a college's entire score. However, I do question how many schools a provost really has sufficient knowledge about to make a relative judgement on. The guy at Michigan St. is making assessments on hunderds of schools right? Isn't he going to have very little basis to judge the relative merits of places that his school has little overlap with? It seems misguided to me to ask this guy which is better between Vanderbilt and Emory.</p>
<p>^ It won't be complete information; couldn't possibly be. But as chief academic officer, the provost at Michigan State is going to have a pretty good idea how his own faculty and students stack up against both Vanderbilt's and Emory's, especially in scholarly productivity, impact, and reputation. He'll know where he beats them both, where only one, and where neither; and he'll have a pretty good idea where they stack up against each other along those dimensions, just because he's competing with both of them. There's probably relatively little direct competition for students between MSU on the one hand and Vandy or Emory on the other---probably not that many Michigan residents go to either Southern school. But these days especially, he'll know that their students' published stats are better than his, and that if there is direct competition for a student his biggest and probably only weapon is in-state tuition and possibly targeted merit aid. But there's certainly competition for faculty. He'll know they've both got deep pockets and can outbid him if it comes to direct head-to-head competition for a faculty appointment, but he'll also know there are some fields in which he has a comparative advantage because his own department is stronger and therefore more prestigious, even if the overall prestige of the university is not as great. Armed with that much information, I think the provost at Michigan State can probably make a pretty credible expert comparative judgment on at least some key aspects of Emory's and Vanderbilt's excellence. I think the problem is not so much in making those judgments about schools that are ahead of you in the pecking order---as Emory and Vanderbilt surely are over Michigan State, as is reflected in their PA scores, 4.0 for both Vandy and Emory, a very respectable 3.5 for Michigan State. Everyone keeps their eye on the top, and on everyone else standing between you and the top. It's more of a problem making judgments about those significantly below you in the pecking order. </p>
<p>Look, Michigan State is a pretty darned good school, #71 in the US News ranking and with a PA rating that ties with Wake Forest or Case Western. It's not really a problem for the provost at Michigan State to keep track of what's going on at those 50 or 70 schools ahead of him; he'd be failing to do his job if he didn't. What's more of a problem for him is to keep an eye on what's going on down below, at a Washington State (#118, 3.0 PA) or a Kansas State (#124, 2.9 PA); and the further you go down the list, the less the provost at Michigan State will know, because the schools become less and less his competitors. He'll know he's ahead of them in just about everything that counts in the competitive business he's in; but probably not much more than that. But at that point, the appropriate response is simply to check the "don't know" box, which I'd imagine a lot of survey respondents do a lot of the time. </p>
<p>Also, I suspect incremental differences in PA ratings matter a whole lot less at the lower levels of the prestige scale, though I could be wrong about that.</p>