Rankings have proliferated since 2003 with 17 global university rankings tracked. While rankings are widely publicized and drive public concern, media coverage is highly selective with a clear hierarchy of prominence for certain rankings like THE and QS over others using similar methodology. This selectivity reflects the interests of current higher education elites and results in a collusive relationship between media, universities, and rankers where each benefits while flaws in rankings are ignored. More independent and specialist criticism of rankings is needed to separate ranking, auditing, and advertising functions.

1. Rankings,
Universities and the
Media
RICHARD HOLMES
BOLOGNA 10 MAY 2019

2. Some observations
 Rankings have proliferated since 2003
 17 global rankings in the IREG Inventory
 Plus business, subject, regional etc
 Already out of date
 Largely ignored in 2003, now intense public concern

3. Ranking Realities: the ranking
community
 Diverse and complex
 IREG International Inventory has 45 rankings
 Since publication new rankings from Russia, Kazakhstan,
Iran

4. Ranking realities; the media
THE
QS
 Shanghai Rankings
 US News Best Global Universities
 CWUR, Nature Index, Webometrics, Nature Index, Reuters, Emerging/Trendence, Round Rankings, National Taiwan University, URAP,
Scimago etc etc etc

5. Media coverage highly selective
 Compare the THE world rankings and Round University
Rankings
 Similar methodology
 But RUR includes more indicators
 RUR has sensible weighting
 Compare Babol Noshirvani University of Iran in the two
rankings
 THE top 400, 1st Iran, 1st for normalised citations
 RUR 615, 7th in Iran, 59th for citations

6. continued
 BUT compare the public response to the rankings
 Google search
 THE – over 1 million plus
 RUR – 62,000
 THE reported in the national press, praised by university
heads
 RUR covered in Russia, Central Asia and Eastern Europe

7. Rankings hierarchy
 1. THE
 2. QS
 3. Shanghai
 4. US News Best Global Universities
 5. Research based rankings by universities or research
centres
 6. Web based rankings

8. continued
 Yesterday’s sessions – Raghu and Cesar referred to THE
and QS
 Exceptions – URAP in Malaysia, Webometrics in Africa
 Does this hierarchy have anything to do with quality of
any kind?
 Reliability, validity, consistency, transparency?
 Or does it reflect the interests of the current elites of
higher education?

9. Collusion between media,
universities and rankers
 Errors and defects of rankings are (mostly) quietly
ignored
 We don’t see (much) criticism of THE for bizarre citation
results, QS for emphasis on surveys
 Rankers provide useful data, but also headlines for the
public, scapegoats and heroes for the media

10. continued
 Narratives for universities – doomsday is coming unless
we get more money and more international students,
British universities are in danger because of Brexit

11. Forget about rankings?
 Can we just forget about rankings?
 We would just revert to the pre-Rankings days and have
informal rankings

12. Criticism of rankings
 From periphery, blogs and social media
 Often anonymous
 Less well known institutions
 Technical criticism in journal articles
 University leaders -- We are unique, rankings do not
measure what matters
 What is missing is criticism that is not anti-ranking in
principle and is comprehensible to specialists

13. What should be done?
 More rankings by universities
 More informed and independent criticism of rankings
 Separate ranking, auditing, journalism, advertising