The Pursuit Of Excellence: 3rd-Party Rankings And Positioning Of Online Programs Through Quality And Value
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Keywords
Online Education Rankings, Business Education, 3rd Party Rankings
Abstract
Third-party ranking agencies (e.g., US News and World Report, Center for Online Education, CollegeChoice.net) produce rankings that are a popular publicly accessible search option for potential students as they sort online degree options. While higher education administration is keen to the possibility that most or all ranking systems risk methodological flaws, potential students are still on board with rankings and seem significantly steered by their results (Barkhorn, 2014). Monitoring rankings has become a positioning consideration for academic institutions. The disparity amongst ranking factors across time and across assessor, along with the mismatch between ranking methods used and suggested methodologies from research on higher education begs the question: which attributes are colleges and universities supposed to leverage? This study reports a fully mediated SEM using data from online student feedback across multiple quality touch points: faculty, LMS and course on student loyalty as mediated by perceived value.
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 International License.
Ashley Kilburn, University of Tennessee at Martin, USA
Ashley Kilburn’s research publications center around Internal Customer Orientation, e-SERVQUAL, online learning,
as well as pedagogical approaches to the online learner. E-mail: akilburn@utm.edu (Contact author)
Brandon Kilburn, University of Tennessee at Martin, USA
Brandon Kilburn’s research area is Leadership and Followership within organizations, the approach to the online vs. fact-to-face learner, impacts of classroom simulations on student outcomes, as well as electronic service quality assessment. E-mail: bkilburn@utm.edu
Kevin Hammond, University of Tennessee at Martin, USA
Kevin Hammond’s diverse and well-established research areas include the financial impacts of market orientation on public and private business schools; as well as impacts of feedback on salesperson perceptions. E-mail: khammond@utm.edu
Denise Williams, University of Tennessee at Martin, USA
Denise Williams’ research interests include information systems projects and online higher education. E-mail: dwilliams@utm.edu