A component of program quality assessment consists of a comparison between them. 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. Most of these studies are reputational types of studies and several biases have been associated with them. This problem may be further exaggerated by large institutions who produce a larger number of doctorates and subsequently a larger number of potential raters. The age of the institution may also create a bias in reputational ratings. The program's goal identification can be made from its published literature.