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Rankings and the line of best fit – the ultimate guide or a blunt instrument?

Love them or loathe them, university rankings carry weight. But who do they carry weight with, and are families, students and decision makers becoming savvier in regards to what rankings mean? Viggo Stacey asks.
March 16 2023
8 Min Read

Love them or loathe them, university rankings carry weight. Governments use them to measure quality, families looking for study opportunities continue to look to them for guidance on where to study and they remain a prominent feature of marketing material.

TheĀ sheer breadth ofĀ rankings can be surprising, fromĀ THE, QS, Shanghai Rankings, to the Private University Ranking ā€“ ASEAN, Studocu’sĀ World University Ranking,Ā Webometrics, and theĀ Round University Rankings to name but a few.

A recent Navitas survey of 880 agentsĀ found that 80% of respondents from China said thatĀ ranking featured as top priority for families, compared with 58% of respondents from North Asia, 50% from South East Asia and 45% from Central Asia.

While rankingsĀ didn’t feature as a top five priority from agents in South Asia, ANZ, MENA, Sub-Saharan Africa, Europe nor the Americas, they continue to be held in regard among Chinese families.

“If you have graduated from top tier international universities, the top cities want you”

Traditionally, top ranked institutions offer bragging rights, but there are also real advantages to holding diplomas from ‘top’ universities.

The household register in China, or hukou system, is one, explains Leina Shi, director for education at the British Council China.

ā€œThere are economic migrants within China, people want to want to move into the top tier cities to get paid more and get more opportunities,ā€ she says. ā€œIf you have graduated from top tier international universities, the top cities want you, you get more points in the system.ā€

And Chinese students, who tend to want to return to their home country after graduating, will seek those top ranked universities, she continues. ā€œThat is why these students want to go abroad ā€“ to top up their education, go back, and upgrade their own chances back at home.ā€

Shanghai also opened hukou to international graduates from top 50 ranked universities last year in a bid to attract more talent from overseas. And it’s not only in China where rankings have become ingrained in policy.

Increased relevance

Ministers and government officials will often point to the ‘worldā€™s top’ universities in their respective country. Governments have also placed ranking aims at the heart of strategies as the ultimate measure of quality.

Among the aims of Saudi Arabiaā€™sĀ Vision 2030Ā is to have atĀ least five Saudi universities among the top 200 globally, and while it’s not been the ultimate goal, getting five universities was a way to measure the success of Russia’s internationalisation agenda in its 5-100 project.

But like the hukou move in China, other countries have used ranking as an indicator of immigrants they want to attract.

Japan recently launched a Future Creation Individual Visa visa toĀ allow grads fromĀ top 100 institutions toĀ enter Japan to search for a job for up to two years. Likewise, the UAE has opened aĀ 10-yearĀ golden visa opportunity to grads from top 100, as has the UK in itsĀ High Potential visaĀ for grads of the top 50.Ā Uptake for the UK initiative is still increasing. LaunchedĀ in 2022, UK authorities received 83 application in Q2, followed by 919 in Q3.

But theĀ visa ā€“ thatĀ collates THE,Ā QS and ShanghaiRanking ā€“ is not without its critics.

UK-based academic registrar, Mike Ratcliffe, has written about how one yearĀ Technische UniversitƤt MĆ¼nchen may be included in the top 50 list, but the next year it may drop out.

“Was [TUM] definitely better from 1 November 2020 until 31 October 2021 such that its graduates in those 365 days have higher potential that those in the years either side?” he asked in a recentĀ blog post.

Universities themselves, along with certain graduates, alsoĀ benefit from rankings. As the marketisation of higher education continues, marketing departments often turn toĀ rankings to sell courses and programs.

Speaking with The PIE recently, global head of Insights and Analytics atĀ NavitasĀ Jon Chew suggested thatĀ high-ranking institutions are able to “do so well with student recruitment that it’s almost as if they have the bandwidth and the luxury almost of thinking about other things”.

They canĀ really focus on diversification, TNE, study abroad and scholarships, while lower-ranked institutions “just have to knuckle down and get student recruitment right” in the current competitive period, he suggested. Others point out that institutions want to partner with higher ranked universities to boost their own positions.

Line of best fit

A swathe of international education companies have embedded “best fit” in their marketing and communications.

TheĀ compiler ofĀ THE World University Rankings has discussed ā€“ through its student-facing armĀ THE Student ā€“ the importance of offeringĀ personalised choice rather than a list of the best institutions in the world as key to itsĀ business model.

According to independent education consultant atĀ EKMEC,Ā Elisabeth K Marksteiner, who has previously emphasised the importance of giving advice on “tertiary ā€˜best fitā€™ rather than high ranking”, some parents do care about best fit, but for manyĀ name and prestige ranks most importantly.

“Outside the UK parents will have heard of Oxford and Cambridge, maybe Imperial and LSE, a Durham or Bristol may not have the same name recognition,” she tells The PIE.

“For those outside the US, some think Stanford part of the Ivies, and a Middlebury or Connecticut College will have the same attitude ā€“ is it any good? Thatā€™s when parents turn to rankings.”

Director and founder of The University Guys,Ā David Hawkins, agrees that “rankings are somethingĀ that seems ‘safe’ for families to hang on to in a complex process”.

Top ranked doesn’t necessarily mean most suitable,Ā Marksteiner continues.Ā “They may have got in [to the top ranked institution], but the dream date is rather different in real life,” she says.

“Fit absolutely matters to student success at college as opposed to getting into college,” she adds.

Detractors

The reality forĀ Hawkins is thatĀ rankings are “a very blunt instrument for what are complex processes”.

“Using a ranking has to work on the basis of a generic student goingĀ through a generic process ā€“ but when individuals are involved, each with their own needs and attributes, this process is anything but generic,” he says.

Rhode Island School of Design has recently joined aĀ handful of US law schools and medical schoolsĀ to haveĀ withdrawn from consideration for the US News ranking. Three major Chinese universities have also said they willĀ no longer participate in overseas rankings, including QS and THE.

A lot of concern has to do with what rankings measure, Hawkins highlights, which may not typically be relevant to the quality of an undergraduate experience.

Families also need toĀ understand howĀ ranking sites make money, he contends, pointing to commercial tie-ups between ranking sites and universities or companies offeringĀ counselling services.

Hawkins is by far from the only critic. At a recent webinar, a leader of a well-known HE quality control body put it boldly, describing rankings as “a nonsense”. Or in the words of US education secretary, Miguel Cardona, they areĀ “a joke”.

Others are more diplomatic, such asBritish Council’s director for education, Maddalaine Ansell, when speaking with The PIE during the Going Global conference in Singapore.

While there is aĀ strong link betweenĀ rankings and brand, do rankings allow students to distinguish what you want out of your university education? she asks.

“Typically rankings pick up research excellence and research reputation ā€“ that might be what a particular student might want.

“They might want a brand, but they might actually want really high quality teaching that’s going to leave them fantastically equipped in order to pursue the profession or the activity that was their motivation for going to university. And that might be entirely different from what the rankings measure,” she adds.

Sustainability ranking, importance in marketing, adapting to new world

But rankings providers are looking to adapt to shifts in the market, such asĀ QS’s Graduate Employability Rankings orĀ THE’sĀ Global Employability University Ranking as education upped it focus on employability.

And asĀ sustainability and the environmental crisis has shot up the global agenda, rankings compilers have once again moved.

Writing for The PIE recently, QSĀ CEO Jessica Turner detailed how the newly-launched Sustainability Rankings seeks to “enable students to understand the environmental impact universities are creating”.

StudentsĀ expect universities to be invested in the same social causes that they are, she said, pointing out thatĀ 82% of prospective international students actively seek out information on an institutionā€™s sustainability practices.

The data “can help universities to better understand how they compare to other institutions worldwide across a range of key indicators for environmental and social impact”, Turner said.

UI GreenMetric Ranking of World Universities has ranked sustainability for over a decade, and the non-commercial U-Multirank has measured the HEĀ gender balanceĀ and revealed women are “particularly underrepresented” in research intense universities.

But while rankings adapt, traditional methodologies continue to be questioned.

International education commentator,Ā Trevor Goddard, recently suggested that the sector may be facing a “nuanced re-configuring” ofĀ rankings methodologies that could be “converging to recognise” and learn fromĀ Asian success stories.

“Rankings incorrectly imply a finite amount of good quality education and research”

“Commentators regularly observe Asian institutions ā€˜risingā€™ in the rankings. Perhaps the counter point being they were already successful, simply via other measures,” he wrote.

Other researchers have pointed to an ‘anglophone bias’ in ranking methodologies, suggesting that they ā€œreflect a colonial hierarchyā€ reflecting the historical privilege of institutions in the Global North.

It is a “game of winners and losers”, where universities can only improve their rank if others worsen their own. Rankings “incorrectly imply a finite amount of good quality education and research that universities must compete over”,Ā United Nations University academics Tiffany Nassiri-Ansari and David McCoy have said.

UNU has formed anĀ Independent Expert Group on global ranking, tasked with focusing onĀ the needs and perspectives of stakeholders from the Global South.

“Rankings withĀ unstable and unreliable methodologies are of little use to anyone except for the public relations departments of wealthy Western universities,”Ā Richard Holmes recently wrote on hisĀ University Ranking Watch blog. The worst rankings are “misleading and uninformative… that have eccentric methodologies or are subject to systematic gaming”, he says.

And yet, many will agree with joint managing partner atĀ BH Associates, Ellen Hazelkorn, who says rankings are “unlikely to disappear soon”. If anything, more are likely to be introduced. It will be important to know which ranking is the best.

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