Selections Interview with Gayle Garrett, Project Director, U.S. News & World Report’s Best Graduate Schools Guide

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Selections: Are you concerned about the proliferation of rankings by other publications? Do you consider these other rankings as competition, and do you think this proliferation helps or hurts management education?
Garrett: My personal opinion is that what we have not . . . I want to emphasize that I’m really not speaking for U.S. News . . . but my personal opinion is that the three kinds of rankings and surveys that are now being published are really so different that—and I may be the kind of person, because I am involved in the construction of these rankings, I have an interest in how things are put together and, therefore, what the results are. I would suspect that there are some people who would not like to see multiple rankings. Bob may have a different answer. And the U.S. News marketing people might not like to see other rankings that they then have to address. I don’t think there is anybody out there who is trying to do what we do, in the manner that we do it, and doing it better. I do think that other people are presenting information from a different perspective. And it is really important that people understand that.

Selections: To whom do you find yourself accountable in your work of publishing business school rankings?
Garrett: Obviously, I am accountable to my editor, because the editor makes decisions about what gets included in the table. I am accountable to U.S. News to make certain that whatever we publish is accurate, that when data comes to us, we have all kinds of ways of comparing it against data that was given to us the previous year to catch errors. There is a minimum of two separate processes by which we send information back to the schools to be verified. I am constantly trying to make what we do more and more transparent. That is not always easy, because we really have a brutal publication schedule. There is not a lot of time between the time the data comes in and the time that it has to be put out for publication. And then during the year, I don’t have access to our Web people as much as I would like. I would like to publish more information on the Web. But every year, we keep getting better at it. There is an information feedback loop with the schools. As deans come in—and particularly as they come in and are willing to work their requests through the appropriate bodies in the discipline—the AACSB or the Career Services Council specifically, or the GMAC people. U.S. News tries very hard and I try very hard to look at those standards and implement them as carefully as we can, so that we’re lifting the best standards from the profession. Standards of accountability.

Selections: What do you see for the future of the rankings?
Garrett: Well, I don’t think they are going to go away. It’s amazing how much correspondence we get via e-mail and telephone. People who say, “Why don’t you do this, too?” And Bob may know more about this, but I think if we had more resources, we would probably do more. There certainly are requests for us to do more. And again, following this feedback loop with the organizations, as organizations adopt more standards and as more schools buy into those standards, the GMAC people are adopting standards now that say, “if you want to be one of the schools listed on our Web site, you have to submit to an auditing process.” As that is put in place, that is going to make things more and more transparent. As that is enforced, it is a two-way street. Our publishing things causes the data to be clearer. And GMAC requiring audits is also going to cause the data to be clearer. I think there is a dynamic there to get clearer and clearer information and more reliable information out there. I think people have just gotten used to having this information available.

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