Yet, today, teaching is often viewed as a routine function, tacked on, something almost anyone can do. A program's reputation is often mistaken with its quality. Further, a program's reputation may lag behind its current quality. Further, quality should be looked at as a relative term. We often talk about programs with higher or lower quality.
Quantitative measures are often concerned with numbers and are easier to deal with.
Qualitative measures, on the other hand, which are not as specific and deal with measuring the quality of faculty and students, for example, are much harder to define and assess. This classification was based on the assessment of faculty and facilities for the preparation of doctoral candidates. The respondents were asked to rate each doctoral program in their own field. This rating was based on quality of graduate faculty and effectiveness of the doctoral program. Most of the studies cited above are reputational type studies and several biases have been associated with them.