Shopping Around

It seems that many universities are now targeting specific rankings. One example is Universiti Malaya which submits data to QS but so far has not taken part in the THE rankings.

Now there is a report about the University of Canberra:

"The University of Canberra will spend $15 million over the next five years on some of the world's top researchers as the university pushes to break into the world rankings by 2018
The university has budgeted $3 million a year to attract 10 ''high performing'' researchers in five specialist areas: governance, environment, communication, education and health.
The recruitment drive started last week with advertising in the London Times Higher Education supplement [sic], with the paper's ranking of ''young'' universities the target of UC's campaign, with 13 Australian universities already in their top 100.
''We've decided to aim for [that] one particular ranking, although that will probably mean we'll hit some of the targets for many of the rankings, because there are an overlapping set of criteria that are used,'' Professor Frances Shannon, the university's deputy vice-chancellor of research, said."

It looks like the university is aiming not just at the THE under-50 rankings but specifically at the citations indicator which rewards high levels of citations in fields that are usually not cited very much.

This may be another case where the pursuit of ranking glory undermines the overall quality of a university.

"The recruitment drive comes after the university was criticised this month for axing language courses to try to combat government funding cuts while continuing its sponsorship of the Brumbies rugby team."