Are global rankings losing their credibility?

This article is published in WONKHE.

Even the Spectator reads the THE rankings

The influence of the global rankings, especially the Times Higher Education (THE) World University Rankings,  appears to have no limits.

An article by Harry Mount  in the Spectator describes the changing educational background of the leaders of the Labour Party. The top ranks used to be filled by graduates of Oxford (Denis Healey, Harold Wilson, Tony Blair, the Milibands, Ed Balls), Cambridge (Tristram Hunt) and Edinburgh (Gordon Brown).

Now they have been replaced by the alumni of Brunel and Birkbeck (John McDonnell), Sussex (Hilary Benn and Owen Smith,  Nottingham (Michael Dugher ),  Westminster (Gloria De Piero) and Hull (Tom Watson and Rosie Winterton) . Jeremy Corbyn lasted a year at  the Polytechnic of North London now London Metropolitan University.

Mount observes that Oxford was second in the latest edition of the THE world rankings, Hull 401st and London Metropolitan unranked.

It is only fair to point out that participation in the THE rankings is voluntary so maybe London Metropolitan could have been ranked if they had bothered to send in the data.

Not everyone is impressed by the THE rankings. "Tony Dark" comments

"Amusing to note the reference to the Times Higher Education world ranking: this allegedly authoritative table is produced by a handful of hacks, and their hired statisticians, from a journal so insignificant that hardly anyone even in universities reads it. The other allegedly authoritative table, emanating from an organisation called QS, is largely driven by another clique of journos who split from the Times Higher . And the heads of multi million pound universities quail before the wondrous listings generated by these miniscule cabals. A mad world, my masters."

Going Up and Going Down

A revised version of  a previous post has been posted at University World News. Readers are welcome to comment here.

More on Politics and Rankings

The Higher Education Minister of Malaysia has praised the country's leading university, Universiti Malaya (UM) for getting into the top 150 of the Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) World University Rankings. He also noted that UM and other Malaysian universities had done well in the QS subject rankings.

The problem with relying on QS or Times Higher Education (THE) is that they are prone to volatility because of  reliance on reputation surveys that can be unstable outside the top dozen or so universities. Things have been made worse this year by methodological  changes. In the case of QS one change was to give more credit to citations in the humanities and social sciences thereby helping universities that publish mainly or entirely in English.

A more consistent view of university performance might be found in the Shanghai or US News rankings.

Rankings Become Big Politics

University performance in global rankings has become a favorite weapon of politicians around the world. Scotland's first Minister has noted that there are five Scottish universities in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings and that the Scottish government will "continue to work with our universities to make two sure that they continue to be that fantastic success story"

She did not mention that  there are only two Scottish universities in the top 200 of the Shanghai rankings and in the US News Best Global Universities.

Tokyo Metropolitan University is Still in the Japanese Top Ten

Until recently Tokyo Metropolitan University had an advertisement with Times Higher Education proclaiming their perfect score of 100 for citations. This year the score fell to 72.2 and so now they just say "TMU ranks 9th among Japanese universities in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2015-2016"

I hope they got a discount.