The market for academic control

I have posted, e.g., here, on academic markets, specifically in relation to USNWR and other rankings. I see no reason in theory why markets can’t discipline academic institutions as they do private firms. 

If rankings affect schools’ markets for students, faculty and contributions, the next question is whether this will be translated into governance changes.  In other words, is there a market for control in academia?

Tom Arthur, Emory’s dean, resigned recently, shortly after Emory dropped nine places in USNWR. This story indicates that the two events are not related.  So we can only speculate. 

But now we also have data, albeit from the b-school side: Fee, Hadlock and Pierce, Business School Rankings and Business School Deans: A Study of Nonprofit Governance,  34 Financial Management, Vol. 34, No. 1, Spring 2005.  Here’s the abstract:

We examine the relation between business school dean turnover  and MBA program rankings from 1990-2002. We find little evidence  that dean departures are related to changes in a school's overall rank in the US News & World Report rankings. However, dean turnover increases following drops in the Business Week rankings and deterioration in the student placement score as measured by US News & World Report. These results are significant in both a statistical and economic sense. Our findings suggest that schools react either directly to the rankings or to information that is reflected in the rankings.

I wonder, in this market for control, what the academic version of Gordon Gekko will look like.