Two Decades of Rankings: Rising and Falling in ARWU

 Most rankings are of little value for identifying trends over more that a couple of years. Changes in methodology, and sometimes a lack of access to old editions make year on year comparisons difficult or impossible. The Shanghai Rankings, aka ARWU, have maintained a generally consistent methodology over two decades and publish data going back to the founding year of 2003.

So it is possible to use ARWU to look for  patterns in the  world's research and higher education landscape. Here are some "winners" and "losers", based on the number of universities in the ARWU top 500 in 2004, when Shanghai changed the initial methodology to include the social sciences and 2023. This is far from a perfect measure; for a start this ranking does not takes no account of the humanities and relies to much on old Nobel and Fields laureates. Even so it does give us some idea of the shift in the academic world's centre of gravity.

Rising

Australia from 14 in 2004 to 24 in 2023 (and from 2 in the top 100 to 7)

Brazil from 4 to 5

China from 16 to 98 (and from zero in the top 100 to 11)

Malaysia from zero to one

New Zealand from 3 to 4

Saudi Arabia from zero to 6

Singapore 2 in the top 500 in 2004 and 2023 (but rising from zero in the top 100 in 2004 to 2 in 2023)

South Korea from 8 to 11

Falling

Canada from 23 to 18 

France from 22 to 18

Germany from 43 to 31

India from 3 to 1

Israel from 7 to 5 (but rising from 1 to 3 in the top 100)

Italy from 24 to 16

Japan from 36 to 12 (and from 5 in the top 100 to 2)

Switzerland from 8 to 7

United Kingdom from 42 to 38 (and from 11 in the top 100 to 8)

United States from 170 to 120 (and from 51 in the top 100 to 38)

The last two decades have seen a massive increase in the research capabilities of universities in Australia, China, South Korea, and Singapore. The rest of Asia, including Japan and India, has stagnated or even fallen relatively and perhaps absolutely.

The biggest losers are the USA, UK, and Germany although Canada, France, Italy and Switzerland have also not done so well.

More recently, Saudi Arabia has noticeably improved and may soon be followed by other Middle eastern states.

                                

The New QS Methodology: Academic Snakes and Ladders

The ranking season is under way. The latest edition of the QS world rankings  has just been announced and we have already seen the publication of the latest tables from Leiden Ranking, CWUR, RUR, uniRank and the THE Impact Rankings plus the THE Asian and Young Universities and  Sub-Saharan Africa rankings. Forgive me if I've missed anything.

Each of these tells us something about the current geopolitics of higher education and science and the way in which they are reflected in the global ranking business. 

The QS rankings have a new methodology, which makes it quite different from previous editions. Nonetheless, the media have been full of universities celebrating their remarkable achievements as they have soared, surged, risen, ascended in the rankings. No doubt, there will be a few promotions and bonuses.

It is in the nature of ranking that places are finite and if some  universities suddenly surge then others will fall. It seems that the general pattern of the QS rankings is that Canadian, Australian, and American universities are rising and Chinese, Korean, and Indian Universities are falling. Russian and Ukrainian universities are also falling although that might be for other reasons.

QS have reduced the weighting of their academic survey from 40% to 30% and faculty student ratio from 20% to 10%. The weighting for the employer survey has increased from 10% to 15% and there are three new indicators, Sustainability, Employment Outcomes, and International Research Network.

QS claim that the new methodology "reflects the collective intelligence of the sector, and the changing priorities of students." If that is so, then the collective intelligence is very localised. The new methodology puts a heavy fist on the scales in favour of Western universities and against Asia.  

The revised methodology works against universities that have acquired a good reputation for research or recruited a large and permanent faculty. It favours those that have mobilised their alumni network for the employer survey and are enthusiastic participants in the sustainability movement. 

As a result the leading Chinese institutions have taken a tumble. Peking has fallen 5 places to 17th, Tsinghua 11 to 25th, and Fudan 16 to 50th. 

Other national and regional flagships have tumbled, Seoul National University from 29th to 41st, the Indian Institute of Science from 115th to 225th, the University of Tokyo from from 23rd to 28th, an the University of Hong Kong from 21st to 26th.

In contrast, the University of British Columbia, McGill University, the University of  Toronto, the University of Melbourne, the University of Sydney, the University of Cape Town, Witwatersrand University, Trinity College Dublin, University College Dublin, University of California Berkeley and UCLA are climbing the ladders. For the moment at any rate.

 

World Economic Forum Declares that Africa is Rising

The World Economic Forum (WEF),  an organization of the global economic elite, has published a report by Phil Baty, currently Chief Global Affairs Officer of Times Higher Education (THE), that proclaims that African universities are "surging in the world rankings" and that this is a highly positive development. This is an irresponsible claim that has scant relationship to reality. 

The report refers to a claim in 2012 by Max Price, then Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cape Town, that African universities needed to rise to the challenge of global university rankings. According to Baty, African universities are now successfully competing in the rankings game and rising to the top.

And just what is the evidence for this? Well, in 2012 there were four African universities in the THE World University Rankings, In 2022 there were 97. An impressive and remarkable achievement indeed if we are talking about same  rankings. But they are not the same.

In 2012 the THE rankings consisted of 402 universities. By 2022 they had expanded to 2,345 including "reporters", of which 1500+ were formally ranked. It would be truly amazing if any region had failed to improve its representation.

The real comparison, of course, is with the numbers in the top 400 in both years and here there is no sign of any African surging. In 2012 there were three South African universities in the top 400. The University of the Witwatersrand and Stellenbosch University were in the 251-275 band and in the 2022-2023 rankings they were in the 251-375.  The University of Cape Town was 103rd in 2012 and 160th in 2022-2023, which might be cause for concern if this was a ranking that had a rigorous and stable methodology but that is not the case for THE. 

The fourth African university in the top 400 in 2012 was the University of Alexandria in the 301-350 band. By 2022 it had dropped to the 801-1000 band. This was a university on a downward spiral from its magical moment of ranking glory in 2010 when it was ranked 147th in the world overall and 4th in the world for citations as a result of a spurious affiliation claim by a serial self-publisher and  self-citer, who was involved in a libel case with Nature.

By 2022-2023 another African university, the University of Cape Coast in Ghana, had entered the top 400. This was not a testimony to any kind of achievement. It was simply the result of the university taking part in the Gates-funded Global Burden of Disease Study (GBDS). Because of a flawed methodology it is possible for a university with a few papers in the study, which typically have hundreds of authors and citations, and a small number of total publications to rack up scores of 80, 90, or even 100  for this indicator. 

There is then no evidence of a surge of any kind, not even a bit of a trickle.

That brings us to the assertion that Nigeria has, followed by Egypt, posted the biggest gains in the citations indicator, which purports to measure research impact or research quality or something, and has therefore achieved excellent progress. 

THE is being entirely too modest here. It could have used the indicator to celebrate the extraordinary accomplishment of a range of African institutions and countries that have surged in the rankings with 90 + scores for citations, an incredible accomplishment that contrasts with very low scores for Research, which includes publications, expenditure and reputation. In fact, if this indicator is taken seriously a number of African universities have now outpaced reputable research universities in North America and China. 

These research influencers, according to THE, include Jimma University, Ethiopia, Damietta University, Egypt, Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences, Tanzania, Aswan University, Egypt, University of Lagos, Nigeria, the University of Zambia, and Kafrelsheikh University, Egypt.

Again, this has nothing to do with excellence or teamwork or transformative practices or any other current managerial shibboleth. It is largely the result of contributing a single researcher or a few to the hundreds of "authors" of GBDS papers in The Lancet and other prestigious journals and collecting credit for thousands of citations.

The cruellest aspect of this is that THE have announced that they are finally getting around to a partial revamping of the world rankings methodology this year. If THE do go ahead it is very likely -- not certainly because the whole process is so complex and opaque -- that these universities will go tumbling down the rankings and we shall probably see leaders across the continent under fire for their gross incompetence.

It is strange that an organisation that supposedly represents the best minds of the corporate world should adopt THE as the sole arbiter of African excellence. It is not the only global ranking and in fact it is probably the worst for Africa. It emphasises income, assessed by three separate indicators, self-submitted data which diverts the unacknowledged  labour of talented and motivated faculty, and reputation, and privileges postgraduate programmes. 

Perhaps also, at the risk of committing heresy in the first degree, the quality of higher education should not be Africa's highest priority. The latest edition of the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) shows that Morocco, Egypt, and South Africa do very poorly with regard to fourth grade literacy. For South Africa and Morocco, the situation revealed by the 2019 Trends in Mathematics and Science (TIMSS) was little better, although they did come out ahead of Pakistan and the Philippines. Surely, this is as crucial for the future of Africa as the funding of doctoral programmes.

Article in University World News

 

Go HERE for my recent article in University World News.

Is the switch in rankings’ focus masking the West’s decline?

A recent commentary in The Lancet by Richard Horton presented criticism of international university rankings, including a briefing paper from the United Nations University (UNU) in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Horton makes some relevant comments on the rankings, although his survey is very limited and incomplete, and he argues that they need to be reformed to hold universities accountable for their social responsibilities. He notes that the UNU report suggests doing away with rankings altogether.

The status of The Lancet is such that this article provides insight into the collective thinking of the Western academic and scientific establishment and it therefore needs some attention.

To start with, getting rid of rankings, as posited in the article, sounds like a good idea, but it is not really feasible. Bureaucrats and faculty in the big brand universities are not suggesting that every university is as good as any other, that their salaries or tuition fees be reduced to the industry average, that research grants be allocated randomly or that their students are no more employable or intelligent than those at other places.