I think we need to distinguish several aspects of the problem (which all are equally depressing, in my opinion):

1. Rankings are not valid. I gave a presentation on the topic once and came up with the title "Rankings use invalid indicators to measure irrelevant properties of wrongly constructed units of measurement". We could discuss this at some length but I wouldn't unless someone actually tries to defend the validity of rankings :).

2. Rankings are powerful. It is more difficult to provide a brief argument here but this has to do with a neoliberal ideology that constructs universities as 'competing' with regard to their 'performance'. This ideology is jointly fed by producers of rankings, higher education politicians who are responsible for universities but have little guidance for acting on that responsibility, and university senior management which is held responsible for university performance without really being able to influence it. Under these conditions, ways of thinking and blueprints for measuring performance diffuse from the North/West throughout the world. They are wrong there, too, but do less harm. They do a lot of harm everywhere else. Neoinstitutionalism can explain all that. The point is that there are people who are responsible for making universities better, that this requires information on performance, and that this information is very difficult to get. Rankings pretend to provide such information, which makes them powerful.

3. Universities can try to improve their ranks, e.g. by hiring Nobel laureates or authors of Science and Nature papers on 10% contracts (there is evidence for that), or by paying salary increases for publications in Science and Nature (there is evidence for that, too). Obviously, this has little to do with improving research and teaching performance.

4. Universities can also try to improve their teaching and research. This is unlikely to improve ranks because rankings are decoupled from performance. It also raises the tricky question of what unviersity performance is. The global dialogue and the ranking methodologies are dominated by an understanding of research performance as contributing to the advancement of basic research on topics that are of interest to the elite of fields, which is located in the North/West. Any idea of performance as contributing in teaching and research to the actual needs of a country is out of the global dialogue because it is, well, not global. It is also difficult to operationalise.

5. What could be done? Develop performance measures that reflect the performance that is needed locally. This requires a national debate on what you want your universities to achieve, and maybe the agreement that Nobel prizes should not be high on the agenda. From this agreement could follow that global rankings are irrelevant to you. Use these measures to create your own ranking. In my opinion, this would still be unlikely to be a valid measurement, but at least it would be invalid and appropriate rather than invalid and inappropriate.

I see the practice as fundamentally unreliable, because there does not seem to be a set of objective standards by which universities of different types can be ranked.

Hi Kirk. Thank you for your observation. What should institutions do in light of the reality you described? Regards

As an idea, it is very good. But fixation of criteria for such ranking is very difficult due to difference in the related parameters among different countries. An international summit of education experts is required to fix the criteria at first.

Interesting question!!!

 It is more directly related to our life, I believe to work effectively in social development, we must consider the following issues:

- You have to provide new incentives for your staff, and monitor performance from the top.

- Pay attention with few publications telling other staff to improve their research output.

- The younger ones are more likely to want to raise standards.

- Human resources departments should be more active in attracting (and keeping) the best staff.

- Loyalty, it is often remarked, in academic’s life.

- Leaders should have control of the strategy and the concomitant powers to make it happen.

Link may be useful to all:

 www.timeshighereducation.com/features/top-20-ways-to-improve-your-world-university-ranking/410392.article.

Best wishes

I think that all the issues about universities ranking is not fair. most of the universities in the developing countries can not compete due to many reasons such as the lack of fund, infrastructure and brain drain. in addition to economic and political challenges. yet, these universities play important role by educating people and offering scholarships.

Thank you all for your interesting ideas and suggestions! I'd also be happy to know your opinions on whether universities from the third world would at all benefit from the ranking exercise which as you said is faulted in many ways.

Rankings are mostly a political instrument taht relates very little to actual research. In the Arab World it has been a farce !

See my paper with Sari hanafi here about the ranking of US News & World Report:

https://tadweenpublishing.com/blogs/news/18584321-ranking-arab-universities-a-farce

Universities form teh developing world cannot benefit from theese rankings because they are biased by the indexing of WoS and Scopus.

Thanks!

Ranking is an instrument that/where:

1 Reproduce inequalities and maintain the same structure on the universities "market".

2 Periphery will always be discriminated and the center, the norther universities, will always control the scientific research.

3 Whose logic doesn't collide with the issue of making research.

4 Supports the "globalization of knowledge" for socials sciences and prevents the research of objectivity.

Despite all the disadvantages that you have raised still universities in the third world still aspire to participate in the rankings? Why is this so?

I think we need to distinguish several aspects of the problem (which all are equally depressing, in my opinion):

1. Rankings are not valid. I gave a presentation on the topic once and came up with the title "Rankings use invalid indicators to measure irrelevant properties of wrongly constructed units of measurement". We could discuss this at some length but I wouldn't unless someone actually tries to defend the validity of rankings :).

2. Rankings are powerful. It is more difficult to provide a brief argument here but this has to do with a neoliberal ideology that constructs universities as 'competing' with regard to their 'performance'. This ideology is jointly fed by producers of rankings, higher education politicians who are responsible for universities but have little guidance for acting on that responsibility, and university senior management which is held responsible for university performance without really being able to influence it. Under these conditions, ways of thinking and blueprints for measuring performance diffuse from the North/West throughout the world. They are wrong there, too, but do less harm. They do a lot of harm everywhere else. Neoinstitutionalism can explain all that. The point is that there are people who are responsible for making universities better, that this requires information on performance, and that this information is very difficult to get. Rankings pretend to provide such information, which makes them powerful.

3. Universities can try to improve their ranks, e.g. by hiring Nobel laureates or authors of Science and Nature papers on 10% contracts (there is evidence for that), or by paying salary increases for publications in Science and Nature (there is evidence for that, too). Obviously, this has little to do with improving research and teaching performance.

4. Universities can also try to improve their teaching and research. This is unlikely to improve ranks because rankings are decoupled from performance. It also raises the tricky question of what unviersity performance is. The global dialogue and the ranking methodologies are dominated by an understanding of research performance as contributing to the advancement of basic research on topics that are of interest to the elite of fields, which is located in the North/West. Any idea of performance as contributing in teaching and research to the actual needs of a country is out of the global dialogue because it is, well, not global. It is also difficult to operationalise.

5. What could be done? Develop performance measures that reflect the performance that is needed locally. This requires a national debate on what you want your universities to achieve, and maybe the agreement that Nobel prizes should not be high on the agenda. From this agreement could follow that global rankings are irrelevant to you. Use these measures to create your own ranking. In my opinion, this would still be unlikely to be a valid measurement, but at least it would be invalid and appropriate rather than invalid and inappropriate.

One of the limitations of established university rankings is they mostly measure academic research and teaching is marginalised or even excluded— in part because research is easier to measure than teaching. University rankings therefore don’t measure everything universities do. The UK Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) is an example of a new scheme that just measures teaching. See:Article Metrics and methodologies for measuring teaching quality in ...