Institutional Prestige and Reputation among Research Universities and Liberal Arts Colleges*

This study examines the variables that are the most strongly associated with institutional prestige and reputation and presents an exploratory model. This research expands earlier efforts by including more recent data on larger populations of public and private universities, as well as on liberal arts colleges. The analysis draws upon data from U.S. News & World Report (USNWR), the Institute for Scientific Information Web of Knowledge, IPEDS, AAUP, and four college guidebooks: Barron’s, Peterson’s, the Princeton Review, and the Fiske Guide. Finding general support for the model, the robust regression results explain about 90% of the variance in USNWR peer reputation score.