The Consequences of Ranking

There is an excellent post by Eric Beerkens at Beerkens' Blog reporting on an article by Wendy Nelson Espeland and Michael Sauder in the American Journal of Sociology. The article, 'Rankings and reactivity: How public measures recreate social worlds', describes how the law school rankings of the US News and World Report affect the behaviour of students, university administrators and others.

Beerkens argues that international university rankings also have several consequences

1. Firstly, rankings affect external audiences. Trivial differences between institutions may lead to large differences in the quality and quantity of applicants.

2. Rankings may amplify differences in reputations. If researchers or administrators are asked to assess universities of which they have no knowledge they are likely to rely on the results of previous rankings.

3. Resources such as grants distributed on the basis of rankings .

4. Universities will give up objectives that are not measured in rankings and try to become more like those who achieve high scores.