At the Wine Styles Symposium, reported on previously, Mary Ewing-Mulligan addressed the issue of high scoring wines and the misguided assumption that a given score alone is an indication of quality. She noted that when asking Ed to select a wine to pair well with a given meal, she never once has requested a 92 point scoring wine (or other similarly scored wine for that matter). However, it is known that many consumers go into their local wine shop, using a minimum score among, or possibly as their only, selection criteria.

In listening to Mary speak, I was reminded of a similar discussion I had in graduate school. The key difference between the two was in the product — one being wine, the other being higher education. Whether one subscribes to Parker’s Wine Advocate, Wine Spectator, Wine Enthusiast, Decanter or any other wine publication, a numerical score will be connected with nearly every tasting note included within its pages. Not dissimilar to the rankings allocated to our institutions of higher learning as found within the annual issue of U.S. News & World Report.

Prospective students and their parents look to these scores when choosing where to pursue undergraduate and graduate study. In some cases, the decision of where to attend school for the next four years can rest on the particular ranking that a college received that year. Can the average consumer determine whether School A, ranked 11th nationally, is any better than School B, which was ranked 15th nationally, based upon those rankings? Probably no more so than he or she can judge whether a 90 point Sauvignon Blanc is of any lesser quality than a 91 point Sauvignon Blanc or a 93 point Bordeaux.

Mary and Ed’s answer to the wine problem is to categorize wines by their styles, which they define as a taste profile, which brings together a collection of characteristics. In this way, a consumer who discovers their personal preference for aromatic whites over earthy whites could be taught to identify which whites meet their preferred taste profile. Moreover, they would, we hope, feel confident to try a new wine within that category as well as feel that their preference is equally valid as someone else’s preference for some other taste profile. As a result, the consumer would be able to identify and select wines that met his/her preferences and needs.

In response to the ranking mania associated with colleges and universities, several academics have proposed new approaches to categorizing such institutions that move away from scores, which bear little correlation to student learning and student experiences. A highly-ranked college may be well regarded, but may not be suitable for all students based upon their learning styles, value preferences or other individual attributes. One such approach was developed at the University of Pennsylvania’s Institute for Research on Higher Education, culminating in the Collegiate Results Instrument (CRI). The CRI focused on the results produced by a given institution such as how its graduates measured their abilities and their value preferences. These measures could then be used by prospective students to see how a given institution’s graduates differed from its peer institutions.  In this way, a prospective student could decide which of the institutions would best meet his/her needs to develop a certain skill set or values upon graduation.

While, at the time, the CRI was adopted by Petersen’s Guides to College, I don’t believe that sales of the U.S. News’ annual college and university issue have declined as a result of its creation. Nor do I think that we will we see a shift away from wine scores anytime soon due to sales of the Wine Styles book. However, I do hope that conversations around new approaches will continue to illuminate this issue with rankings and help consumers see that there are other, more productive, ways to compare similar goods and services.

From a market perspective, given the weight that such publications carry in the respective industries, both wineries and colleges are hard pressed to ignore such rankings despite their protestations that such scores don’t really mean anything. Accordingly, until consumers trust that they can make their own, informed decisions about these selections, the rankings will continue to play an important role in which school is chosen and in which wines are purchased to toast the child’s college send-off.