[finolex1]

Gaming of rankings aside, the ratings organizations themselves offer various 'services' to colleges looking for a reputation boost.

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/05/29/methodology-q...

For instance, QS sells a 'star-ranking' system for schools. Coincidentally the schools who paid for a '5-star' ranking, such as the Unviersity of Bristol or the Universiti Malaya are also placed higher on the actual QS ranking than those that did not, including Georgia Tech, the University of Washington, Ecole Polytechnique and UIUC.

[alexpetralia]

Related to expenses..

"And there are several perverse incentives in the marketplace that make it hard for colleges to cut costs. The most basic one is that the U.S. News algorithm rewards them for spending a lot of money: Higher faculty salaries and more spending on student services lead directly to better rankings. If you reduce your expenses, your ranking will fall, which means that next year your applicant pool will probably shrink."

You'd be surprised at the burgeoning expenses of universities, and often meager profitability, despite record-high tuition rates. It seems, often like startups, a burn rate signals potential growth!

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/09/10/magazine/coll...

[mattkrause]

I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that above-market faculty salaries are not a major issue.

[alexpetralia]

I would argue its headcount growth (not salary per employee), but admittedly I could not immediately find data for this.

Edit: Also upon looking through the Trinity College financial statements, a huge portion was categorized as "Other", which included consulting fees, travel, interest expenses and various other expenses.

[Trombone12]

Isn't the point of an audit is that it tells you what problems to fix? It would be concerning if this audit happens only shortly before, or even after, the main ranking happens.

But if the increased ranking is done based on data from, say a half a year later, then that just seems like a normal audit effect? That it might just make the client better at gaming the rules is true for a normal audit too.