How to Use Podcasting to Increase Your University’s Ranking

Every year, U.S. News & Global Report releases their ranking of the Best Colleges in the United States. Over the last few decades this report has become one of the most popular resources for prospective students choosing their school. Because of this, many universities dedicate tons of resources to improving their ranking in hopes of attracting top talent.

But how do you rise up the ranks? And how can podcasts help? In this article we’ll discuss both of these topics, but first we need to acknowledge the elephant in the room.

The Elephant in the Room

U.S. News and Rankings purports to be an objective ranking of colleges, but anybody who works in higher education knows that’s not quite true. In the past, schools have massaged the data they give to U.S. News to present their institution in a more favorable light. While U.S. News has taken steps to mitigate this problem, they haven’t eliminated it.

In addition, if your university doesn’t play along with U.S. News’ rules, your ranking gets punished. The most famous example of this is Reed College, who have always refused to participate in the rankings, and have thus been rated lower than they probably deserve. The lack of objectivity in the rankings has recently inspired other large universities to stop participating – including Harvard Medical School.

U.S. News has traditionally favored prestige schools (think: Ivy League) in their rankings, but now that prestige schools are dropping out, there is an unprecedented opportunity for smaller up and coming institutions to rise in the rankings and attract top talent to their school.

But before we discuss tactics, we need to start with the basics. How does U.S. News & World Report determine their rankings?

How Does U.S. News & World Report Determine Their Rankings?

Thankfully, the ranking methodology is public knowledge. You can find it directly on the U.S. News website. Each school is rated and ranked based on 17 factors. Most of these are objective indicators like graduation rate and faculty compensation, but there are a few that we can boost using the power of podcasts.

Here’s the U.S. News diagram of how they rate each school, and we’ve highlighted the factors that we’ll be focusing on for the rest of this article.

How You Can Use Podcasts to Increase Your University’s Ranking

Increase Your Awareness and Reputation

A whopping 20% of your university’s ranking is determined by “undergraduate academic reputation,” a very subjective metric. This academic reputation is determined by a peer assessment survey given to other colleges.

To increase your ranking through reputation, you need to establish your school’s academic authority in the eyes of the public. Podcasts are perfect for this, because listeners are very trusting of their favorite podcasts.

As a university, you have a powerful tool at your disposal to make the most out of podcasts – podcast guesting. By booking your faculty and researchers as podcast guests, you give them a longform opportunity to explain their work at your university to a public audience. Best case scenario – a researcher from another university might even hear the episode and cite your faculty’s work in an academic paper!

If you want to learn more about podcast guesting, we’ve written tons of articles about the benefits, as well as how to get started – check them out!

Alumni Fundraising

While it’s not as highly weighted as academic reputation, the other U.S. News factor you can influence with podcasting is alumni fundraising. 3% of the total score is determined by the average alumni giving rate. With podcasting you can increase your U.S. News ranking and raise money for your school at the same time. Win win! Here’s how:

Podcast guesting will naturally help alumni fundraising as you increase your schools awareness and reputation, but it shouldn’t be your primary method as the audience will be much broader than your school’s alumni.

In addition to guesting, one option is to start a branded podcast hosted and produced by your school. Your podcast can interview professors, stand out students, tell stories about campus life, and more! Your podcast not only reminds alumni of your multifaceted lively campus, but also attracts new students to apply, and builds your reputation as a stand-out university.

All you have to do is remind listeners every episode about how they can donate and the wonderful plans you have to put their donation money to work!

But…there are two huge caveats with this option:

First, many universities underestimate the amount of work it takes to run their own podcast, eventually leading to burnout and podfade.

Second, popularity doesn’t come overnight. It may take years for your podcast to become successful, and many university-run podcasts never find their footing. For example, the average reach of this list of university-run podcasts is around 600 listeners a month, with the School’s In and UConn 360 leading the pack with 3,000 monthly listeners each (Source: Podchaser Pro data).