When Is Excellence Not Excellence? Awards, Rankings, and the Reputation of Universities (#756)
Universities love awards and rankings.
They announce them in press releases, celebrate them on websites, and share the good news with alumni, donors, faculty, students, and the public.
Being recognized as the best, the most innovative, or the most distinguished institution in a particular field is a powerful marketing tool.
But:
Who decides what constitutes excellence, and how do they know when they have found it?
More importantly:
What is the difference between an award for excellence, a ranking of excellence, and actual excellence?
These are not necessarily the same thing.
The HEED Award: Excellence by Application
Consider the Health Professions Higher Education Excellence and Distinction (HEED) Award, presented by Insight Into Academia magazine.
The award recognizes health professions schools for achievements in student recruitment, retention, academic support, faculty development, institutional belonging, and related programs.
Institutions must apply, describing their accomplishments and providing information about their policies and practices.
Representatives of Potomac Publishing, Inc., which publishes Insight Into Academia, evaluate the applications and select recipients.
There is no application fee, and not every applicant necessarily receives an award. It would therefore be unfair to characterize HEED as a pay-for-recognition scheme.
Nevertheless, questions remain.
Who evaluates the applications? What qualifications do they possess? Are institutional claims independently verified? Are faculty, students, and staff consulted?
And how competitive is the award?
In 2025, 28 health professions institutions received HEED Awards. In 2026, the number was 19.
But how many applied?
If 20 institutions applied and 19 received awards, the recognition would mean something quite different from an award given to 19 institutions selected from 200 applicants.
Without knowing the applicant pool, evaluation scores, or selection threshold, it is difficult to assess the award's selectivity.
An award based on an institution's application may recognize what the institution reports about itself.
It does not necessarily establish what the institution actually does.
U.S. News & World Report: Excellence by Reputation
Now consider the widely celebrated U.S. News & World Report rankings of veterinary schools.
Universities proudly announce their positions, particularly when they rank among the nation's top institutions. Such recognition can influence institutional reputation, student recruitment, faculty appointments, and philanthropy.
But how are veterinary schools ranked?
Unlike undergraduate rankings, which combine multiple quantitative indicators, the veterinary rankings have historically relied primarily on a peer-assessment survey.
Academic leaders at veterinary schools evaluate the academic quality of other programs using a five-point scale.
A 2025 paper published in Frontiers in Veterinary Science examined this methodology and reported a response rate of approximately 53% for the 2022–2023 survey cycle.
The rankings therefore reflect professional perceptions of academic quality rather than direct measurements of educational outcomes.
Those perceptions may be informed by genuine knowledge of research achievements, faculty reputations, and institutional accomplishments.
But they do not independently establish the quality of clinical teaching, graduate competence, student satisfaction, faculty morale, administrative transparency, or shared governance.
A school with an outstanding research reputation may rank highly despite difficulties with faculty recruitment, clinical staffing, or educational costs.
Conversely, an innovative school producing exceptionally competent graduates may receive less recognition because its reputation has not yet caught up with its achievements.
Reputation is not the same as performance.
UC Davis: Two Recognitions of Excellence
The University of California, Davis provides an interesting example.
In 2026, the UC Davis Weill School of Veterinary Medicine celebrated its position as the nation's No. 1 veterinary school in the U.S. News & World Report rankings for the tenth consecutive year.
The school also announced that it was the only veterinary school among the 19 recipients of the 2026 Health Professions HEED Award.
These achievements deserve acknowledgment. UC Davis has a distinguished history in veterinary education, clinical medicine, research, and professional service.
But what do these recognitions actually establish?
The U.S. News ranking indicates that the school enjoys an exceptionally strong reputation among academic peers.
The HEED Award indicates that its submitted programs and practices satisfied the publisher's evaluation criteria.
Neither necessarily demonstrates excellence in administrative decision-making, transparency, faculty consultation, or shared governance.
And that distinction matters.
What About Shared Governance?
Over the past year, I have examined the principles and practice of shared governance in universities, particularly in relation to the renaming of the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine following a major philanthropic gift.
My concern has not been the generosity of the gift or the academic accomplishments of the school.
It has been the decision-making process.
Who participated? When were stakeholders consulted? What information was provided? Were faculty representatives given meaningful opportunities to deliberate before decisions became effectively irreversible?
These questions concern the integrity of academic institutions.
A university may have outstanding research programs, internationally recognized faculty, exceptional clinical facilities, and excellent student support services.
But what if important decisions are made without meaningful faculty consultation?
What if faculty representatives are instructed to maintain strict confidentiality about matters affecting the wider academic community?
What if consultation occurs only after essential decisions have already been made?
Can such an institution reasonably claim excellence?
Certainly, it may demonstrate excellence in research, teaching, clinical care, or student support.
But excellence in veterinary medicine does not automatically establish excellence in university governance.
Institutional excellence is multidimensional, and governance deserves to be part of its evaluation.
Three Ways of Measuring Excellence
The distinction becomes clearer when we consider three approaches.
Excellence by application: An institution describes its accomplishments and is recognized for satisfying an award program's criteria. The HEED Award is an example.
Excellence by reputation: Academic peers evaluate an institution according to their knowledge and professional judgments. The U.S. News veterinary rankings are an example.
Excellence by demonstrated performance: An institution is evaluated using independently verifiable evidence of its educational outcomes, research quality, clinical training, faculty retention, student well-being, administrative accountability, and governance.
The third approach is more demanding, but potentially more informative.
Interestingly, researchers have already proposed alternatives to reputation-based veterinary school rankings.
A 2025 paper in Frontiers in Veterinary Science, titled Proposal of an Objective Formula-Based Model for Equitable Ranking of Veterinary Colleges, recommended incorporating measurable indicators such as faculty resources, clinical caseload, veterinary licensing examination performance, research activity, and educational costs.
Such an approach would have limitations, including the difficulty of deciding which indicators matter most.
Nevertheless, it represents an effort to move beyond reputation alone.
I would suggest adding another dimension:
Institutional governance.
Why not examine whether faculty participate meaningfully in major decisions, whether administrators follow established procedures, and whether institutional actions withstand independent scrutiny?
If governance influences the environment in which teaching, research, and clinical service occur, surely it deserves consideration.
The Commercial Value of Excellence
Awards and rankings also have commercial value.
For universities, recognition enhances reputation, attracts applicants, supports fundraising, and strengthens institutional branding.
For publishers, awards and rankings generate attention, readership, advertising opportunities, and interest in related publications and services.
The HEED program, for example, offers optional commercial products, including best-practices reports.
None of this establishes dishonesty or suggests that institutions necessarily purchase favorable outcomes.
But it does create incentives worth examining.
An institution benefits when it can announce that it is excellent. A publisher benefits when its evaluations are regarded as prestigious.
The important question is whether the methodology justifies the recognition.
Problems arise when a limited evaluation becomes a sweeping institutional claim.
An award recognizing particular programs becomes evidence that an entire university is excellent.
A ranking based largely on academic reputation becomes proof that a school provides the best veterinary education.
The recognition may be legitimate, but its interpretation can extend well beyond what the evidence supports.
Universities should be particularly careful about this distinction.
Universities teach students to question evidence, evaluate methodology, recognize bias, and distinguish conclusions from unsupported claims.
Universities expect researchers to disclose conflicts of interest and submit their findings to independent scrutiny.
Should universities not apply those same standards when celebrating awards bestowed upon themselves?
The Real Test of Excellence
A genuinely excellent university should welcome independent evaluation.
It should assess not only its successes but also its weaknesses. It should listen to faculty, students, and staff, acknowledge mistakes, and demonstrate that its policies are followed in practice.
Perhaps most importantly, it should recognize that excellence is not a permanent status conferred by an award or preserved indefinitely through reputation.
Excellence must be demonstrated through decisions, actions, and outcomes.
The HEED Award may recognize worthwhile institutional initiatives.
The U.S. News & World Report rankings may reflect genuine academic distinction.
Both may provide useful information.
But neither should be mistaken for a comprehensive, independently verified measure of institutional excellence.
Perhaps the most revealing test has nothing to do with awards or rankings.
It concerns what happens when someone asks difficult questions.
Does the institution welcome scrutiny? Does it provide evidence? Does it consult those affected by its decisions? Does it practice the transparency, integrity, and accountability it celebrates publicly?
Or does it prefer recognition without examination?
When is excellence not excellence?
When recognition is mistaken for proof.
When reputation is mistaken for performance.
And:
When the pursuit of recognition becomes more important than the pursuit of excellence itself.
Because genuine excellence does not begin with an award or end with a ranking.
It begins with what an institution does when nobody is handing out prizes.
References
1. Insight Into Academia. Health Professions Higher Education Excellence and Distinction (HEED) Award. https://insightintoacademia.com/about-the-heed-award/
2. U.S. News & World Report. Best Veterinary Schools rankings and methodology. https://www.usnews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-health-schools/veterinarian-rankings
3. Frontiers in Veterinary Science (2025). Proposal of an Objective Formula-Based Model for Equitable Ranking of Veterinary Colleges. https://doi.org/10.3389/fvets.2025.1526980
4. University of California, Davis. Official announcements concerning the 2026 veterinary school ranking and Health Professions HEED Award:
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