Boycotting the Shanghai Rankings?

John Fitzgerald of Swinburne University of Technology has written an article in the Journal of Political Risk that argues that Western universities should boycott, that is not participate in or refer to, the Shanghai rankings in order to show opposition to the current authoritarian trend in Chinese higher education.

There seems a bit of selective indignation at work here. China is hardly the only country in the world with authoritarian governments, ideologically docile universities, or crackdowns on dissidents. Nearly everywhere in Africa, most of the Middle East, Russia, much of Eastern Europe, and perhaps India would seem as guilty as China, if not more so.

American and other Western universities themselves are in danger of becoming one party institutions based on an obsessive hatred of Trump or Brexit, a pervasive cult of "diversity", political tests for admission, appointment and promotion, and periodic media or physical attacks on dissenters or those who associate with dissenters. 

Perhaps academics should boycott the THE or other rankings to protest the treatment by Cambridge University of Noah Carl or Jordan Peterson? 

One way of resisting the wave of repression, according to Professor Fitzgerald, is to "no longer reference the ARWU rankings or participate in the Shanghai Jiaotong rankings process which risks spreading the Chinese Communist Party's university model globally. Universities that continue to participate or reference the Shanghai rankings should be tasked by their faculty and alumni to explain why they are failing to uphold the principles of free inquiry and institutional autonomy as fiercely as Xi Jinping is undermining them."

It is hard to see what Fitzgerald means by not participating in the Shanghai rankings. The Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) uses publicly available data from western sources, the Web of Science, Nature, Science, the Clarivate Analytics list of Highly Cited Researchers, and Nobel and Fields awards. Universities cannot avoid participating in them. They can denounce and condemn the rankings until their faces turn bright purple but they cannot opt out. They are ranked by ARWU whether they like it or not. 

As for referencing, presumably citing the Shanghai rankings or celebrating university achievements there, Fitzgerald's proposals would seem self defeating. The rankings actually understate the achievements of leading Chinese universities. In the latest ARWU Tsinghua University and Peking University are ranked 43rd and 53rd. The QS World University Rankings puts them 16th and 22nd and the THE world rankings 23rd and 24th. 

If anyone wanted to protest the rise of Chinese universities they should turn to the QS and THE rankings where they do well because of reputation, income (THE), and publications in high status journals. It is also possible to opt out of the THE rankings simply by not submitting data.

If oppressive policies did affect the quality of research produced by Chinese universities this would be more likely to show up in the Shanghai rankings through the departure of highly cited researchers or declining submissions to Nature or Science than in the THE or QS rankings where a decline would be obscured if reputation scores continued to hold steady.

Fitzgerald's proposals are pointless and self defeating and ascribe a greater influence to rankings than they actually have.