QS, ARWU, U.S. News, and THE: Do These World University Rankings Really Matter?
Photo by Joshua Hoehne on Unsplash
World University Rankings, we see them on university websites all the time, on the landing page or the About page. We reference them from time to time. We use them to draw comparisons between one university and another. But do they actually matter? What even are they based on? Are they even an accurate reflection of a university’s worth? Or are they just numbers we knowingly put so much worth into?
Before we delve deep, let us tell you what a World University Ranking is…
Basically, world university rankings are lists of universities in the world ranked based on the overall scores given to them by an authoritative body. The authoritative body can range from an education analyst company (QS) to a media entity (THE and U.S. News & World Report) to an organization (ARWU). Each of these authoritative bodies has its own criteria and ways to aggregate scores. They do not have the same methodology for their rankings. Some put more weight into one indicator while others consider said indicator not very relevant.
Nevertheless, the rankings do have some uniformity in indicators. So scores across the board tend to take into account these indicators:
Academic Quality
Academic quality refers to the amount of research conducted, the impact of said research, and the quality of teaching at the university. QS and THE even consider the student-to-teacher ratio when giving out an academic quality score.
Faculty
Faculty has a lot to do with the prestige and productivity of the university’s professors and lecturers. Conference attendance, research put out, classes taught, lectures given out all count toward productivity. Meanwhile, prestige can be very subjective but a common quantifier used to judge prestige is awards and honorary doctorates. ARWU gives extra points for faculty that have won the Nobel Prize or the Fields Medal.
Reputation
Reputation is judged around how a university is perceived by outsiders. It also refers to expert opinion on the university. Experts here refer to people who work in higher education and know the ins-and-outs of universities and their inner-workings. Most rankings put a lot of weight on reputation, for example, U.S. News administers “peer assessment surveys” and weighs it at 20%.
International Outlook
International outlook refers to the number of international students and faculty at the university as well as how many international partner institutions a university has. The more connected globally a university is, the higher their score on this indicator.
Employability of Graduates
Employability of graduates looks into how quickly graduates of the university are at getting their first job, companies’ opinions on the universities, and the quality of graduates. In recent years, this particular indicator has grown to be more and more important.
At a glance, these indicators can be considered as just and fair as they are comprehensive, tangible, and measurable. However, it is not perfect. A lot of these indicators, such as academic quality, faculty, and international outlook tend to be self-reported. Furthermore, while there is a verification process for the data, the authoritative bodies behind the world rankings ultimately do not have the endless resources needed to verify the statistics of thousands of universities in the span of a year. This leads to the rankings’ reliance on universities to submit their most truthful and raw data. Universities, in turn, rely on the rankings to boost their profile and attract students, funding, et cetera. Hence, the potential for “beautification” of data.
Beautifying Data: Inflating Numbers to Get the Top Spot?
In September 2022, Columbia University confirmed reports that it had sent inflated data to U.S. News & World Report to secure a better undergraduate national ranking. The university had originally claimed that they had a higher number of undergraduate classes with less than 20 students in it and more faculty with PhDs than they actually do have.
Following their confirmation, Columbia University fell to 18th from 2nd in the U.S. News national rankings.
In early June this year, the university announced that it would no longer submit data to U.S. News.
“Yet we remain concerned with the role that rankings have assumed in the undergraduate application process, both in the outsized influence they may play with prospective students, and in how they distill a university’s profile into a composite of data categories. Much is lost in this approach.”
However, Columbia is just one in a long list of universities that have been reported to tweak their data to get a higher ranking. U.S. News & World Report as the main ranking-setter of U.S. universities has been at the receiving end of inflated scores quite a few times before.
December 2021, Temple University’s Fox School of Business: Dean found guilty of fraud. The school submitted false information regarding test scores and work experience of students to U.S. News to secure the number one spot on national online MBA programs rankings.
2019, University of Oklahoma: University admitted to falsifying the percentage of alumni giving.
August 2012, Emory University: University admitted to sending false data regarding incoming students to U.S. News since 2000.
January 2012, Claremont Mckenna College: Admission dean resigned after admitting that they inflated SAT scores of incoming students to prop up the university’s rankings.
Why bother?, you may ask. Why not just be truthful?
Well, the reality is never that simple and being truthful isn’t always for the best. The reality is most universities tend to rely on endowments which are donations made available to them by an entity or an individual. As they rely on endowments, they also rely on the goodwill of people capable of donating the largest sum.
Most people donate money to a university under these two circumstances:
They are alumni of the university
The university is prestigious
Sadly, prestige is often equated to world rankings. So the higher the ranking of a university, the more likely they are to receive more endowments. Universities also rely on tuition fees, whether it be from national or international students. Students are keener to apply to a university which is ranked highly than one that is not. The students graduate and go on to become alumni who might give back to their alma mater.
So for universities, world rankings could be a matter of whether or not they have the funds necessary to sustain their operations. It’s the line between the defunding of departments and more money going into top programs.
The Fight to the Top & the Measures Taken
U.S. universities are not the only ones fighting to get the top spot. Universities all around the world are trying out various methods to crack the methodologies of university rankings.
In May 2023, SIRIS Academic, an education consultancy based in Spain, published a report on the practice of changing affiliations in 2022 Highly Cited Researchers list. It noted that Saudi Arabian universities have 109 Highly Cited Researchers, half of which are not primarily employed by the universities but are primarily affiliated with them. The report alleged this was done to secure a higher ranking on ARWU whose methodology only counts primary affiliations for researchers.
To boost the rankings of Korean universities, the Korean government set up multiple funds starting in 1999 called Brain Korea 21 to invest heavily in research and attract foreign scholars to Korea. Korean universities hired foreign scholars in drove and received a huge number of international students, boosting their rankings. However, over time, many of these scholars ended up leaving and their retention rate is low.
In the end, universities simply do their best to meet the criteria set out for them to wildly varying successes. Their success on the world rankings also does not equal to quality but rather quantity.
Gatekeepers of Academia
It can also be argued that world rankings feed into the gatekeeping of academia.
For one, the authoritative bodies who administer the rankings majorly come from first-world countries. Their criteria are based on first-world standards and tend to ignore indigenous knowledge production. The weight they give to Western awards and perspectives also does not favour Global South countries who miss out on these awards most of the time due to bias and exclusion.
The standard of SCOPUS when it comes to journal publications also hurts Global South researchers who cannot pay the publishing fees asked for by top journals.
In the end, world rankings can be a convenient marker to judge a university on.
But there are better ways to quantify a university’s worth. Here’s what we suggest you do:
Look into the curriculum of the degree you are interested in
By seeing the classes offered you can see if the degree is in line with what you want to learn or not. You will also be able to guess how in-depth the teaching will be and what approach they are taking: is it more theoretical? Practical? Are they leaning towards a certain school of thought or scholars or figures?
Google the faculty
Search up the lecturers and see what their previous research is about. Their research and its number of citations can tell you a lot about the academic quality of the university. (You can even go on Rate My Professors to see if they are good teachers on top of good researchers!) Look into what programs or projects they funded, collaborations or partnerships done with various organizations, etc.
Talk with alumni
Connect with alumni on LinkedIn and schedule a (virtual) coffee chat with them. Prepare your questions about what exactly you want to know about the universities that will help in your decision-making process. Most seniors will be happy to share their experiences and thoughts on the program with you!
Rankings don’t have to be your only factor in deciding on a university. Get the full picture by seeing all the sides of the program!
