It’s that time of year again. Shanghai Jiao Tong University’s Academic Ranking of World Universities, the QS Top University Ranking, and U.S. News & World Report’s annual list have just been published, and will shortly be followed by the Times Higher Education world rankings. Despite pages of critique, rankings still have the capacity to create fear and loathing in the higher-education and policy worlds – even before the ink is dry. Surely no one really believes that universities can move up or down the rankings scale in any meaningful way, on an annual basis – so why such hysteria?
It seems to me that the common denominator is status and wealth. Rankings bring vital visibility to nations and universities in an increasingly competitive world. The more globalization drives a single market in education, as it does in most goods and services, the more higher education is a beacon for investment and talent – the more this kind of barometer is inevitable. The publication of the Shanghai ranking in 2003 set the cat among the pigeons. Governments and universities around the world sat up and took notice – because rankings challenged, in a very public way, self-perceptions of excellence. It called attention to what I call the gap between self-declaration and external-verification.
To read the full, original article click on this link: WorldWise - The Chronicle of Higher Education
Author:Ian Wilhelm
