There are things that someone once came up with, and the rest got used to them and began to take them for granted. This happened with university rankings, which at the dawn of their existence raised questions and doubts, and now trust in their quality and truthfulness is almost limitless. Parents and applicants actively study world and local rankings to choose the best one for admission, trust them and sometimes do not even consider alternative ways to select an educational center.
But can rankings still be 100% trustworthy? Or are their assessment and benchmarking tools obsolete? We talk about the relevance of global and local rankings to make it easier for you to make such an important choice in the future.
The Main Dilemma in the Issue of Trust in Rankings
Comparative analyses and evaluative rankings work well with those things that can be compared directly. For example, if you need to choose a new laptop or refrigerator, then you can read comparison tables between different models on the Internet, and there will be no double standards and subjective parameters – everything is clear: battery capacity, operating power, memory capacity or storage room size, height, color.
In the case of universities, comparative analysis is much more complicated: subjective conclusions are mixed with general figures, and the statistics of successful graduates depend on the total number of students in a particular institution. This can easily bring a small university to the top and send a large one to the bottom of the list.
But ordinary people do not always think about how such rankings reflect the real state of affairs and the quality of education at a particular university. Some universities are beginning to question the adequacy of such assessment systems, and faculty and other staff are becoming suspicious of them. But even today, rankings remain one of the most influential tools for choosing a university.
How Rankings Gained the Trust of Applicants Around the World
In short, this phenomenon can be explained as follows: the human brain loves numbers, because it is easier to measure the quality of similar options with them. That is why we are so attracted by the headlines "Top 10 best universities in the world"! We trust numbers and statistics, especially if the same university is on such a list two or more times. But we do not always think deeper: "For what merits did this university get into the list? Does this ranking reflect the real level of quality of education at the university?"
Most of all, the undeniable human love for numbers and statistics is manifested in relation to those ratings that have existed in society for more than one year. People unconditionally agree with the "experts" and "world appraisers", do not try to use critical thinking and independently find the best place to get a particular specialty. It is much easier to take an assessment prepared by someone else, someone more "experienced" and "authoritative".
Some experts from the educational sphere call this approach to choosing a university a consequence of capitalist-centric thinking. Because of this, education in society is perceived as another commodity that can be chosen by the example of a laptop or refrigerator through comparative analysis.
What is the attitude of university staff to rankings?
Alas, in addition to the impact on applicants, rankings also have a negative impact on university staff. Some of them are so dependent on a specific line in the list that they are ready to direct all resources to increase or maintain their position in the ranking, and because of this, real processes within the university may suffer:
- Staff are irritated by the state of perpetual race between universities,
- When compiling curricula, the emphasis is placed on the specialties that are relevant to the compilers of the rankings, and not on the real market demand,
- The lion's share of the funding goes to decorate the campus, and not to improve the qualifications of teachers, for example.
These are just a few options for what negative consequences the excessive enthusiasm for rankings has for the universities themselves. Most often, in real life, universities that stand, for example, in positions No5 and No15, do not differ too much from each other in most parameters.
It is impossible to exclude from the reasoning the fact that some universities specifically select the best areas and successful students to participate in assessment surveys conducted by the compilers of the rankings. At the same time, in reality, this number of programs and people may turn out to be a smaller percentage of the main masses, but the position in the ranking will be high, and applicants will a priori consider this university the best of the best, right in all respects.
Do rankings have any positive aspects?
It would be unfair to say that university rankings are pure evil. Still, there are benefits from them: for example, getting into the lists for the first time, even in the last positions, helps the world learn about a new university, and in some cases, getting into the ranking even in hundredth place out of a hundred is already a victory, because the university was thus chosen from thousands of others.
What is the future of rankings?
Applicants for 2024 also began to lose confidence in the ranking of universities. For example, a British poll from Kaplan and Manhattan Prep showed that 55% of applicants in 2024 are unanimous: rankings over the past years have lost some of their own prestige. If the compilers of the rankings do not update the key parameters for assessment and do not modernize the assessment systems themselves, then the level of their influence in society is likely to decrease every year. As an improvement to the systems, rankings can consider the following ideas:
- To rank institutions not by a general list, but to divide them into subgroups according to similar initial data,
- Abandon general lists in favor of more local ones, for example, assess universities in specific specialties (this approach shows itself well in practice),
- Move away from the assessment of easily accessible parameters in favor of deeper values.
Some world rankings are already using these ideas as the basis for their own scoring systems, but this is only the beginning of a change that could either turn into a new era of trust in rankings or be the end of years of success.
Do you think the rankings reflect the real picture of the quality of education in universities?
