Relevance of University Rankings: Flaws, Concerns, and the Quest for Reform

March 4, 2024

GS Paper II Indian Polity and Governance

Context:

Recently, A research officer at Loughborough University in the U.K. reported that universities’ quests for higher ranking mirrors the flawed pursuit of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as the sole measure of a country’s prosperity.

How does the Ranking system work?

Purpose of Ranking : They hold significant weight and influence in shaping educational policies and priorities in the higher education sector in many countries.
Methodology: A ranking system orders the higher education institutes in a place (country, region, etc.) by their accomplishments on various fronts — including
- Teaching, research, reputation, industry-focused research, and collaborative efforts.

World University Ranking

The Quacquarelli Symonds (QS), is a UK-based company specialized in the analysis of higher education institutions around the world, ranked institutions on the basis of 10 indicators:
- Academic reputation, employer reputation, faculty-student ratio, international relation network, citations per paper, paper per faculty, staff with PhD, international faculty, international students, and outbound exchange students.
- Ranking of Top 3 Indian Institutes: IIT Bombay (40th), IIT Delhi (46th) and IIT Madras (53rd).
The Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2023
- It includes 1,799 universities across 104 countries and regions, making them the largest and most diverse university rankings to date.
- It is based on 13 carefully calibrated performance indicators that measure an institution’s performance across four areas:
  - Teaching, research, knowledge transfer and international outlook.
The Academic Ranking of World Universities (also known as the ‘Shanghai Ranking’)
The U.S. News & World Report

Arbitrary measures of Research Excellence like Citation metric(It gauges how frequently a university’s published research is referenced by scholars worldwide.)
- But for the purposes of the ranking, an institute’s performance on each one is translated into a few composite indicators, which are then combined to create a consolidated score.
- Involvement in such projects provides an unfair advantage as they tend to accrue high citation counts due to the presence of multiple authors.
Favoritism: Favor the universities that hosted an important summit of a major university ranking releasing Agency.
Conflict of Interest: Most entities that compile and publish rankings are private enterprises & these entities consulting with universities to help the latter achieve better ranks in their own systems.
Data Security: Additionally, by participating in ranking exercises, universities and institutes provide ranking agencies free reign over their data, compromising their data security.

What Changes can be done ?

The weightage of the citation metric can be reduced ,
New indicators can be added like
- Typical research strength (assesses a university’s research prowess compared to others),
- Excellence in research (measures the presence of outstanding research areas), and
- The Network effect of citations (considers the influence of citations from researchers of varying importance.).
Compilation & Publication of Ranking should be done by an Independent Agency
Ensure Data Security : By End to End Encryption & by Other Privacy measures.

Additional Reading: Rankings, and the Realities of Higher Education

News Source : The Hindu

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