Harvard Tops Media Survey

Harvard topped yet another ranked list on Thursday­—this time it emerged as the most referenced American university in a Global Language Monitor survey of global media sources.

In the two years that the Austin, Texas-based research company, has released this data, Harvard has taken the top spot both times. But this year, it managed to edge out Columbia by only 1.03 percent.

GLM’s Predictive Quantitative Indicator tracks references of different American universities in global print and electronic media, including the Blogosphere and social media.

Schools are viewed as trademarked brands, with a high PQI value correlating to a high brand quality, according to Paul JJ Payack, president and chief word analyst of GLM. A high ranking is a reflection of how well the university is marketing itself as a brand, Payack said.

“When we have a brand, the attributes associated with it are the key things. The same is true with college. When people think of Harvard, people think of certain things associated with the brand,” Payack said. “Quality wins overall. The best quality comes out on top.”

The data does not necessarily suggest that the highest quality universities in the country are mentioned more times in the media, Packack warned. But, he said that he was surprised by “how closely the data mirrored the ranking of the best schools in the country, which shows that it has more value than we may have thought.”

Data on the types of media outlets or topics that the schools were mentioned in relation to were not released along with the rankings. But Payack said that scandals or sports teams made little difference in determining the final list.

“We were concerned that if we talked about media overall that the sports institutions would skew the data in their favor,” Payack said. “It seems that having a dozen or so Nobel laureates creates more buzz globally than do sports teams.”

Payack also suggested that the University’s decision to change the John F. Kennedy School of Government to the Harvard Kennedy School may have had some bearing.

“It never hurts to find a recognizable name,” said Leighton W. Klein, a Web journalist at the Kennedy School’s Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics, and Public Policy. “It never hurts to cite a University that represents authority and knowledge.”

Payack said that Harvard has been successful in branding itself as a University: “all the different schools seem to be telling the same story.”

“In branding, what you want is that each component reflects the brand as a whole. If it is a strong enough brand, all news is good news,” he said.