愛恨交織：商學院與排行榜的那些不為人知的秘密

????從收到的申請人數量和質量，到來校招聘的雇主數量和質量，這些一年一度或兩年一度的排行榜影響著一所商學院的方方面面。它們甚至會影響教師招聘工作。明尼蘇達大學(University of Minnesota)卡爾森管理學院(Carlson School of Management)院長斯里拉塔?查希爾講過這樣一個故事：一位年輕且極具潛力的中國學者決定不加入卡爾森管理學院，原因是她的母親懇求她接受一所排名更高的商學院的聘書，盡管她的專業（管理信息系統）是卡爾森管理學院的優勢學科之一。

????“幾乎所有學校都對排行榜既愛又恨，”印第安納大學(Indiana University)凱利商學院( Kelley School.)院長艾達琳?克斯納坦言。“當這些排行榜對你有利的時候，你就滿心歡喜，對你不利時你就會垂頭喪氣。很長時間以來，我們一直認為，好的表現注定會帶來好名次。但現在，我們終于意識到了一個事實：我們需要關注排行榜本身。”

????一方面，商學院非常依賴排行榜，將它作為一個與同類院校進行比較的標尺，學生的第三方向導，以及一種營銷工具。另一方面，排行榜的泛濫導致廣泛的疲勞，嚴重消耗了時間和資源，排名急轉直下甚至可能會引發一場公關災難。太多的申請人僅僅關注表面名次，他們所不知道的是，任何排名或許只是某位對商業教育不甚了解的記者所做的主觀判斷的結果。

????馬爾科姆?格拉德威爾在《紐約客》(New Yorker )一篇談論高校排行榜的重量級文章中回憶過一段軼事：密歇根州最高法院前首席法官托馬斯?布倫南給大約100名律師散發了一份非正式調查表。從哈佛、賓州州立大學(Penn State )到約翰?馬歇爾法學院(John Marshall)，他要求這些律師列舉十大法學院榜單。律師們最終把賓州州立大學排在了各自榜單的中間位置。問題是，賓州州立大學那時根本沒有設立法學院。格拉德威爾最后總結說：“聲譽評級只不過是從一所高校廣泛且易于觀察的身份特征中簡單推論而來的結果。這些特征包括它的歷史，媒體形象和建筑風采等等。所以說，這些評級帶有根深蒂固的偏見。”

????各類排行榜進一步延續了這些假設。我們不妨就以《商業周刊》的在職MBA排行榜為例：這份雜志邀請各大商學院EMBA項目主管列舉他們眼中的“最佳”項目，并按照從1到10的順序排出名次——在最終發布的排行榜中，他們的評估意見占35%的權重。毫無疑問，這些主管紛紛引用各類排行榜作為評估同類院校的依據，由此創造了一個自我實現的預言。

????塔克商學院負責戰略措施的副院長彭妮?帕克特稱其為“選美比賽”。“人們往往投票支持自己所在院校，他們的個人喜好并不一定建立在對學校的真正了解之上，”她說。“當你被要求從200所候選院校中挑出所在領域的十大院校時，你會怎么做？你那樣做有什么依據？”

????These annual or biennial lists affect everything from the number and quality of applications a business school receives to the quantity and quality of employers who recruit there. They even have an influence on faculty recruitment. Srilata Zaheer, dean of the University of Minnesota's Carlson School of Management, tells the story of a young and highly promising Chinese scholar who decided not to join the Carlson faculty because her mother implored her to take an offer from a higher ranked school--even though her discipline--management information systems--is a major strength at Carlson.

????"Nearly all schools have a love-hate relationship with rankings," concedes Idalene "Idie" Kesner, dean of Indiana University's Kelley School. "You love them when they go in your direction, and you are frustrated when they don't. For a long time, we said that if you do good things, the rankings will follow. We have woken up to the fact that we need to focus on the rankings in and of themselves."

????On the one hand, B-schools rely on rankings as a benchmark against their peers, a third-party guide for students, and a marketing tool. On the other, a proliferation of rankings has created widespread fatigue, a serious time and resource drain, and a potential PR disaster when numbers take a nosedive. Too many applicants take them at face value, not understanding that the results of any ranking might be based on little more than the subjective judgments of a journalist, with little, if any, understanding of business education.

????In his pivotal New Yorker piece on rankings, Malcolm Gladwell recalls an anecdote in which Thomas Brennan, a former chief justice of the Michigan Supreme Court, sent out an informal survey to roughly 100 lawyers. He asked them to rank a list of 10 law schools, ranging from Harvard and Penn State to John Marshall. The attorneys positioned Penn State in the middle of the pack. The problem? Penn State didn't have a law school at the time. "Reputational ratings are simply inferences from broad, readily observable features of an institution's identity, such as its history, its prominence in the media, or the elegance of its architecture. They are prejudices," Gladwell concludes.

????These assumptions are perpetuated through rankings. Take, for instance, BusinessWeek's Executive MBA ranking: EMBA program directors are asked to identify the "best" programs and rank them from 1 to 10 -- this assessment amounts to 35% of the final ranking. Directors no doubt reference the rankings to assess their peers, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.

????Penny Paquette, Tuck's assistant dean for strategic initiatives, calls it a "beauty contest." "People vote for themselves, they have personal preferences that are not necessarily based on true knowledge of the school," she says. "When you're asked to pick the top 10 schools in this field out of a list of 200, how do you do that and on what basis do you do that?"