ABSTRACT

Media outlets often produce higher education rankings. These media platforms are largely financed, via advertising, by the higher education institutions they also rank. This paper investigates the relationship between university advertising in the Times Higher Education magazine and their place in the ranking published in the same magazine. Using a fixed-effect identification strategy, the analysis finds that advertising is associated with an improvement of around 15 ranks in the subsequently published ranking. Further analysis provides mixed evidences of a media bias. One potential explanation is that advertising institutions follow better reporting practices regarding data used to build up the ranking.

摘要

媒体通常会发布高等教育排名。这些媒体平台主要由它们排名的高等教育机构通过广告提供资金。本文调查了《泰晤士报高等教育》杂志中的大学广告与其在同一杂志上发表的排名之间的关系。使用固定效应识别策略，分析发现在随后发布的排名中，广告与大约 15 位的排名有关。进一步的分析提供了媒体偏见的混合证据。一种可能的解释是，广告机构在用于建立排名的数据方面遵循更好的报告做法。