Not really.
It seems that one major function of rankings is to cover up the decline or stagnation of major western universities. An example is the University of California Riverside (UCR), a leading public institution.
Recently there was a tweet and a web page extolling UCR as "America's fastest rising university" on the strength of its ascent in four different rankings: Forbes 80 places in two years, US News 33 places in two years, Times Higher Education (THE) 83 places in two years and the Center for World University Rankings (CWUR) 41 places in one year.
This surprised me a bit because I was under the impression that the University of California system had been declining in the research-based rankings and that UCR had not done so well in the THE world rankings. So I had a quick look. In 2019-20 UCR was in the 251-300 band in the THE world rankings. Two years before that it was 198th and in 2010-11 it was 117th. I have little trust in THE but that is evidence of a serious decline by any standards.
But it seems that the tweeter was thinking about the THE/Wall Street Journal US Teaching Rankings. In 2019-20 Riverside was 189th there, in 2018-19 212th, in 2017-18 272nd, and in 2016-17 it was 364th.
That is definitely a substantial rise and it is rather impressive considering the this rise occurred while the UCR was falling in THE's world rankings. Most of the rise occurred in the outcomes "pillar" and probably was a result of the introduction in 2018 of a new indicator that measured student debt.
UCR's rise had nothing to do with resources, environment or engagement. It is not possible to disentangle the components within THE's four pillars but it is a very plausible hypothesis that a good part of UCR's success is the result of a methodological change that introduced an element where this university was especially strong.
Another ranking where UCR does well is the Center for World University Ranking now published in the UAE. Last year UCR was 204th, in 2018-19 245th, and in 2017-18 218th.
The fall and rise of UCR over two years follows the weighting given to research. When the weighting was 25% UCR's position was 218th. When the research weighting was increased to 70 % UCR fell to 245th. When it fell to 50% UCR rose to 204th. So, here again UCR's rank is dependent on methodological tweaking. It does well when the weighting for research is reduced and less well when it is increased.
I assume that the US News (USN) rankings refer to America's Best Colleges, where UCR does very well. It was 91st last year among national universities and 1st for social mobility.
The rise of UCR in these rankings is also the result of methodological changes. In 2019 USN began to shift away from academic excellence to social mobility, which basically means admitting and graduating larger numbers of recognised and protected groups. The acceptance rate criterion has been scrapped and metrics related to social mobility such as the graduation rates of low income students have been introduced. UCR has not necessarily improved: what has happened is that the ranking has put more weight on things that it is good at and less on those where it performs less well.
The Forbes ranking also refers to changes announced in 2017 that "better align this list with what FORBES values most: entrepreneurship, success, impact and the consumer experience." It is likely that these had a favourable impact on UCR's performance here as well.
When it comes to international research based rankings over several years the story is a different one of steady decline. Starting with total publications in the publications indicator of the CWTS Leiden Ranking, UCR went from 270th in 2006-09 to 392nd in 2014-17. Much of this was due to the general decline of American universities but even within the US group there was a decline from 88th to 93rd.
The decline is starker if we look at the most rigorous expression of quality, the proportion of publications in the top 1% of journals. In the same period UCR fell from 12th to 130th worldwide and 11th to 59th in the USA.
Turning to the Scimago Institution Rankings which include patents and altmetrics, Riverside fell from 151st in 2011 to 228th in 2019. Among US institutions it fell from 70th in 2011 to 85th in 2019.
That is the situation with regard to research based rankings. Moving on the rankings that include things related to teaching UCR fell from 271st in the QS world rankings in 2017 to 454th in 2020. In the Round University Rankings it fell from 197th in 2010 to 231st in 2916 and then stopped participating from 2017 onward.
It seems fairly clearly that UCR has been in declining in indicators relating to research, especially research of the highest quality. It also performs poorly in those rankings that combine teaching withresearch and internationalisation metrics. Exactly why must wait for another post but I strongly suspect that the underlying reason is the declining ability of incoming students and the retreat from meritocracy in graduate school admissions and faculty appointments and promotions.
