It’s that time of year again when higher education and the media become convulsed by the ups and downs of Irish universities in global rankings. To the outside world these rankings appear to provide an easy guide to the best universities. But, like many other issues that make simple headlines, the issue is more complex.
Rankings have been around for more than a century but it wasn’t until the arrival of global rankings in 2003 that they became so influential. Today there are three main rankings: academic ranking of world universities now produced by Shanghai Ranking Consultancy, QS world university rankings, and Times Higher Education world rankings. The European Union has recently published the first version of its own ranking, called U-Multirank.
Rankings are lists of what are purported to be the best universities in the world. However, there is no such thing as an objective ranking. The criteria or indicators used, and the statistical weighting assigned to each indicator, reflects the value judgments of each ranking organisation. Determining which university is “best” depends upon who is asking the question and why. Do the best universities match the criteria established by the different rankings or do they help the majority of students earn the credentials for a sustainable life and employment?
Rankings are published annually. But is it really possible that universities can change so much in a year? Or is their annual publication driven by commercial interests? This alone raises questions about the meaningfulness of the rankings.
Ambitions defined by rankings Over the p
ast decade, research shows students, higher education, governments, employers, investors and the media are increasingly influenced by rankings. In turn, institutional and national ambitions are often defined in terms of rankings.
But our obsession with the top 100 fails to capture the complexity of higher education and the diversity of students. Rankings predominantly measure research performance, and all other indicators hide this fact. This has encouraged a resource-intensive reputation race with disproportionate emphasis on elite students and elite universities. They focus on less than 0.5 per cent of the world’s universities, and a similar proportion of students.
Using the latest Times Higher Education rankings, the United States has 45 per cent of universities in the top 100, while Europe has only 34 per cent.
However, if the scope is widened to include the top 200 the US share declines to 37 per cent while Europe’s increases to 42 per cent.
This suggests that in the small top stratum the US does well but Europe does much better providing greater quality and equality across the sector for more students.
Over the years, and especially since Ireland’s economic collapse, there has been considerable concern about the performance of Irish universities in global rankings. Because rankings use quantification as the basis for determining quality and performance they privilege large countries with large populations and, inevitably, more universities.
Rankings recalibrated
However, if rankings are recalibrated according to GDP or population size, they show a very different situation. Small countries rise to the top and large ones, such as the US, slip. Ireland’s position has been relatively static over the years, despite the impact of the crisis.
At an individual level, Irish universities and DIT have gone up and down – often in opposite directions. Many of the changes are explainable by changes in methodology or the way Irish institutions have reported their data.
There are about 18,000 university-level institutions, according to the International Association of Universities. For Ireland, being in the top 500-600 represents the top 3 per cent of all universities worldwide. If we believed in rankings this is something of which we should be immensely proud.
It has been estimated that the annual budget of a top-100 university is about €1.7 billion. This is would consume almost all the annual budget for Irish higher education, which is about €2 billion. To pursue a national strategy based on rankings would require diverting the entire budget to a single university on an ongoing basis – because one injection of funding would not be sufficient.
But money isn’t the only issue at stake. It’s not evident that the indicators used by rankings measure what is meaningful. Thus, to shape our national higher education policy and priorities according to indicators chosen by (commercial) ranking organisations would constitute the abandonment of national sovereignty. Why should we do this?
Ellen Hazelkorn is policy advisor to the Higher Education Authority and director of the higher education policy research unit at DIT. She is author of Rankings and the Reshaping of Higher Education: the Battle for World-Class Excellence
