Who is Biased?

There has been a lot of discussion about university rankings recently. In Times Higher Education, Phil Baty refers to a comment in the satirical magazine Private Eye about the forthcoming European Union rankings. Why spend public money on the ranking of universities when there are already two recognised rankings? Perhaps, it has something to do with the striking absence of continental European universities from the upper reaches of the THE-QS and Shanghai rankings.

Baty claims to be less cynical than Private Eye. He says that:


"While I am sure CHERPA will strive to be fully independent, it is a group made up exclusively of European universities, and was set up in direct response to Europe's poor showing in the current rankings, so some suspicion is inevitable.

More serious, and entertaining, questions have been asked over other rankings. Russia's RatER raised eyebrows for putting Moscow State University in fifth place, ahead of Harvard and Cambridge, and a ranking from France's Mines ParisTech has been ridiculed for putting five French universities into the top 20."

However, one should not assume that the forthcoming THE rankings will be biased because

"these concerns give THE great confidence - as an independent magazine we are free from the influence of any institution or authority.

We are accountable only to our readers - an increasingly international community of thousands of academics and university administrators. "


But this raises certain questions. Is THE not accountable to the company that owns it? Another question is that "increasingly international" community. "Increasingly" from what to what? And who are those administrators responsible to?


The national bias of the Paris Mines ranking is indisputable. There the top French institution is in sixth place. In the most recent THE-QS rankings the top French institution was 38th, in the Russian RaTER rankinigs 36th, in the Shanghai Aacademic Ranking of World Universities 40th, in the Taiwan rankings 88th and in Webometrics 129th.



The bias of the Russian rankings is even more glaring. They put Moscow State University in 5th place. In no other ranking did they even get intio the top fifty.


I am not suggesting that there is anything dishonest about the Paris and Russian rankings. The Paris rankings is as transparent as it is possible to be. It simply counts the number of CEOs of top 500 companies who attended particular schools. Everything is in the public record. The Russian rankings are not so transparent. The problem here is that its questionnaire contains many references to indicators specific to Russia and the CIS. It is also written in a style that many people would find close to incomprehensible.


The bias in the Paris and Russian rankings stems not from dishonesty but from the choice of criteria that are likely to give an advantage to universities in their countries while downplaying or ignoring those in which their countries are not so strong.


In contrast, the Shanghai, Taiwan, Webometrics, and Scimargo rankings appear to have no home country bias at all.

What about THE? The old THE- QS rankings were pretty obviously biased in favour of British universities. Last year it had Cambridge in second place. The Shanghai rankings put it in 4th place, although that will not be sustained as the impact of old Nobel winners fades. In the Paris Mines ranking it was 7th, in the Russian rankings 8th, in the Taiwan rankings 15th, in Webometrics 22nd , in Scimargo 34th and in the Leiden green index (the size-independent, field-normalized average impact) 37th.


We will see if Cambridge and Imperial College maintain their suspiciously high places in the new THE rankings. If they start slipping a little I will be inclined to agree that THE has in fact overcome its anglocentric bias.