In order to increase the rating and ranking , the institutions may used media surveys (paid for the survey ) indicating better ranking for the institute , may be among top 20 business schools for an example ?

Dear Ekta.

I would recommend you to read the criteria (plural) used by respective ranking systems. THE, Shanghai Jia Tong, QS, ...they all give different weight to different dimensions. The Chinese one ( which is the first ranking) has certain criteria that other two do not even include. They are books written about this issue; a lot of them criticize these rankings blaming them that they accelerate the neoliberal infiltration into universities.

Regarding the manipulation of Data, I guess that all three try to be fair and honest (I give them the benefit of doubt). They are humans and can't be perfect.

You said:

"I may use paid media surveys indicating better ranking for the institute"

Who is this "I" here? The university or the people/agencies that make the ranking lists?

The three ranking agencies collect the data by themselves. They might delegate certain tasks to smaller group of people, even paying them. But corruption here? I doubt.

I also know certain universities have a team of people feeding ranking agencies with data and information (e.g. foreign academic staff ratio, international students, Impact factors of published articles). Gathering info is a big task.

The agencies themselves also run surveys. I do receive invitation to assess certain universities almost every year by one of them. Do they pay me to distort results? Not at all, I assure you.

Interesting question. It could be the case that the propensity for the manipulation of data on indicators that influence various international rankings differs by the institution's location on the given ranking system. In order words, institutions in the top 100 may have a different propensity for the manipulation of data than institutions in the 1000-1100... Just a thought, I have no data to confirm this!

Dear Ekta,

If you want to properly study this topic you need take the things Jae mentioned earlier into account. As Maia rightly noted the ability of a Uni to influence its rankings very much depends on its size, income, staff, etc.

The agencies which put the rankings together have explanations of what they take into account when preparing the rankings. Check out their websites. They don't publish all the details about weighing up numbers and arriving at points, but give you a good picture of what and why they take into account.

I don't know how things go with American, Chinese, and other rankings, but the British ones rely on a mixture of data sources: universities have to publish many of their key statistics (since they receive public funds), and there are many quality and operation regulating bodies in the UK (HEFCE, OFFA, etc.) which prescribe that unis have to measure certain things. One of these measuring tools is the NSS (National Student Survey), another the DLHE (Destination of Leavers from Higher Education survey). These are standard tests, every uni collects the same data. There isn't much a uni can manipulate on this data.

With some data and some rankings and evaluations there is the opportunity to also offer contextual information. E.g. a uni in a very expensive town in the South is likely to have more students from high earning backgrounds simply due to its geographical location and costs attached to attending the uni than a uni further up North in a cheaper place, even if the said Southern uni is trying hard to diversify its student intake. These efforts need to be taken into account and the diversity aspect of the student body evaluated accordingly. This is just one example of all the ways in which the whole question is complicated by different aspects of a uni's situation.

With some data there is a chance for uni's to influence the results but not by corrupt or shady means as far as I know. What a uni can do is to hire people who help students to have reasonable expectations towards their courses and the uni, and rate them in light of these expectations. A uni can of course also do much to address student complaints, improve its services and teaching quality, etc. (there is a whole big field of student experience and quality assurance activity in HE) and these changes can then be communicated to students, who will, hopefully, react to this favourably.

The situation of universities in the UK is also complicated further by the fact that while there are several government prescriptions, laws, and agencies controlling and monitoring how they should operate, they are restricted in how much they can charge for undergraduate degrees (luckily!, otherwise the same horrible situation would develop as it did in the US).

So, many factors go into the rankings, and universities can do much to change their position and the quality of the data they submit, thereby influencing their rankings.

You can read up on these topics on the excellent HE site http://wonkhe.com/

I don't think this is overall good for education, but that's a separate question.

Publication data does count towards rankings most of the time and some universities tried to hire people with good publication records before the last REF submission to influence their ratings. I haven't heard of any unis doing this to influence their league table rankings. Hiring a researcher for the long term is very expensive (say, someone who earns £50,000/year and is going to work for you for the next 25 years costs £1,250,000 throughout that period).

I think a great read on the effect of university rankings on institutional practices is by Wendy Espeland and co-author, see their newest book Engines of Anxiety: Academic Rankings, Reputation, and Accountability (with Michael Sauder). It's a huge study of how ranking of law schools in the US affects their practices, also taking into account differences in the reputation of the institutions. Many of the findings could be relevant for other cases of HE league tables, depending on the stakes these rankings have. For law schools the stakes turn to be very high, as the research explains.

Classification of universities within the QS is very important ,because it depends on the future of the College or the future of graduates One of the important criteria in this classification is the deployment of scientific research in fine Journals