There is no such thing as an objective international university ranking and they undermine the mission of education, says leading DIT researcher, writes DICK AHLSTROM
IT IS ALWAYS a good thing when a university rises up the rankings and breaks into the top 100 institutions. Or is it?
That depends, according to Prof Ellen Hazelkorn. Last week she published a book on the subject and has severe doubts about the value of the international ranking systems.
Do they raise standards by encouraging competition or do they undermine the broader mission to provide education?
The director of research and enterprise at Dublin Institute of Technology (DIT) and head of its higher education policy research unit tends towards the latter.
Pursuit of improved international rankings is distorting third-level investment and yet there is very little evidence that hitting the top 100 delivers lasting benefits.
Hazelkorn has worked with the OECD for 10 years as a consultant in areas such as research management, and in 2006 started looking at the ranking systems that had begun emerging only three years earlier.
“In 2006 it became clear to me that the ranking systems were beginning to have an impact on institutional decision making,” Hazelkorn says.
She organised a survey of institutions with the OECD and the International Association of Universities. It showed that people in these institutions were commenting on and responding to their own ranking performance.
She found that more than 70 per cent of university presidents wanted to have their institutions in the top 10 per cent. It showed that all of them were unhappy about their current ranking and wanted to improve their position.
There are now 10 global ranking systems, and national ranking is carried out in more than 50 countries, Hazelkorn says.
The question is, are they re-shaping higher education and if so, “are they measuring the right things?”
There is also the issue about whether you should decide educational policy and the allocation of scarce financial resources on the basis of ranking systems.
“The choice of indicator is central and there is no such thing as an objective ranking. There isn’t an objective ranking,” she says. “Using a simplistic approach to complex issues inevitably leads to distortions.”
Even so politicians and university officials heading off on international trade missions invariably talk about how many universities they have in the top 100.
“There are few who do not seek to position themselves in terms of rankings. This is realigning university policy in order to reposition themselves,” she says.
It is possible literally to buy into improvements in rankings. “At one level it means an extraordinary expenditure of money.” For example, a country might decide to stream a large fraction of the total budget into only one or two institutions to boost their chances of moving up the rankings.
But the evidence does not show that achieving high rankings delivers a real advantage. “Where is the evidence that spending on one or two institutions will help you advance?” she asks.
Better results come from investing research funding into a range of centres, she believes.
“In the Irish case, the Hunt Report [on higher education] does not comment on ranking in a special way. The Hunt Report in its deliberations adopted what I call a ‘system’ approach. You seek to develop the overall system not individual institutions.”
This is also the approach in Norway and Australia. “It means making your whole system world-class.” You encourage institutions to specialise in various areas and wherever students go they get a high-level international education.
Rankings are unlikely to disappear however and universities everywhere will quote those that flatter. It also helps them realise the competition they face for quality students. “There is no doubt that ranking has forced us all to look at international competition.”
Rankings and the Reshaping of Higher Education: The Battle for World-Class Excellenceby Ellen Hazelkorn. Published by Palgrave Macmillan