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‘ Lack of rigour ’
What if there were no university rankings ?
By Martin Betts
In 2012 at a San Francisco meeting of the American Society for Cell Biology , a group of editors and publishers signed a declaration to change the way Journal Impact Factors were being used to inappropriately depict the comparative quality of research across disciplines .
The declaration called DORA , now an organisation , turned 10 last week , celebrating how the sector working together to push back against inappropriate metrics for journals and research , can support the development of meaningful assessment .
What would happen if universities built upon the success of DORA and went further ? What if , together , they opted out of participating in university rankings ?
Where could we be in 10 years if we replaced the easy to measure metrics that ranking companies choose , and which often serve their own commercial ends , with measures that are important for what diverse universities are trying to achieve , using data that they themselves believe is valid ?
It appears opting out of , or getting rid of rankings is a periodic contemplation , in chancelleries , tea rooms , committee meetings and working groups in many Australian universities .
We typically dismiss the idea as impossible . It is seen as a route to institutional bankruptcy , and loss of international students and research funding . Does it have to be ?
There has been a strong and growing movement in leading US universities to opt out of the US News and World Report rankings .
This started within disciplines such as law , having reached the end of their tether in being victims to the ambiguity in methodologies of this particular ranking , and lack of rigour in process .
Why should university culture be subject to the business model of a publishing outlet , clinging on to revenue and relevance , by creating news about its own rankings ?
At a recent ASU + GSV summit , a CEO of a global EdTech company revealed their disappointment in having failed to buy US News and World Report some time ago with the sole intention of closing it down to do away with its rankings , realising of course there are many more that would remain .
There may be simpler ways of achieving the same outcome .
I think we have a great and growing need for strong , locally relevant , and context appropriate higher education press and content services .
The sector has so much news , ideas and thinking to share beyond a publisher ’ s own attempts to create rankings for just about everything , just about everywhere , with the purpose of getting universities to pay to subscribe and enter .
It will be interesting to see how the growing abstentions from US News and World Report plays out more globally and across other rankings systems . But what would we do without them ? What would it mean to universities pursuing their own sense of purpose , and as with DORA , the need to prioritise locally relevant issues ?
They could create their own missions and goals , that might be more difficult to measure and compare , but more important to aim for and achieve .
Imagine the goal of transforming more lives than all other institutions . This might
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