Ranking universities remains a misleading, fatuous exercise as useful as comparing the tasteful qualities of, say, dependable Russian piroshki with those of an aromatic beef rendang. Chalk and cheese; apples and oranges. But this nasty contrivance has become an annual feature that clogs the email accounts of university staff members and students like cloacal spam, glorified by management moguls. It all depends on whether the institution in question is interested in the Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) measure, or perhaps the Times Higher Education (THE) World University Rankings. Maybe preference will be had for the ShanghaiRanking Consultancy’s Academic Ranking of World Universities, or the US News Best Global Universities Rankings.
Public health academic Sharon Fonn explains why these rankings have come to matter in all their omnipresent oppressiveness: “Institutions, especially those ranked highly, take them seriously. Some allocate staff time to collate data that rankers ask for. University donors take them seriously, journalists popularise them and some parents use them to choose where their children should study.” In November 2023, the Independent Expert Group (IEG) (Fonn also being a member), convened by the United Nations University International Institute for Global Health released a scathing statement on the use of these measures. The authors offer various reasons why such rankings are “problematic”.
The reasons enumerated in the statement bury the matter with crushing finality. For one, these rankings are not “conceptually valid”, given that teaching, research and any number of university functions cannot be jammed “into a single composite indicator”. The figures used are also based on opaque measures and methods (universities are bastions of bureaucratic impenetrability), tend to be “biased towards research, STEM subjects, and English speaking scholars and universities”, tend to be loaded by a “colonial” theme accentuating “global, regional and national inequalities”, produce costly “short-term strategies to improve their rank”, engender “reputational anxiety”, encourage an “extractive and exploitative” culture and groan under the issue of conflicts of interest. A veritable nasty picture.
The QS World University Rankings, to take one example, reads like a boutique list of factors and considerations. “Explore more than 1,500 universities worldwide,” the site chants. “Compare subjects, study destinations and student experience”, it continues. And then, something less chewed on: “Look beyond academic performance with employability and career insights.” The 2027 rankings offer an absurdly perfect score for the Massachusetts of Technology (MIT) with a fantastically useless figure of 100 across citations per faculty and academic reputation. Imperial College in London does not disgrace with a score of 99.2, keeping equal company with Stanford University in California.
In Australia, which offers a striking case study of false readings, the latest world rankings of this specious index were celebrated for such notable appearances as the University of New South Wales in the 19th position making it (as if it mattered a jot), the country’s preeminent institution. The university’s vice chancellor, Attila Brungs, was ecstatic in describing the university more in terms of a football club seeking new charges and collaborations than a place of cerebral celebration. “We are excited to be number one because it allows us to do more, have more impact, more influence and access to more networks.” Keep your eyes peeled on the transfer market, Brungs.
QS Chief Executive Jessica Turner offered praise for the country’s universities with the confidence of a cattle rancher beaming at appreciating stock, noting that 21 had improved their position, showing “a higher education system competing with real confidence on the world stage.” But the rancher offered a cold qualification on this cheerful elevation: “The rankings also highlight areas where further progress is needed. Compared with some of its global peers, Australia performs less strongly on teaching capacity and graduate outcomes.”
Never mind that, cooed chief executive of the Group of Eight (Go8) universities in the country, Vicki Thomson, a figure so utterly corporate she could never be mistaken for the academic sort. “This is an outstanding national result. Australia’s leading universities are performing at an elite global level and continue to compete with the very best in the world.” Against what, exactly? Besides, as Monash University’s Andrew Norton usefully reminds the starry-eyed, domestic students need not bother about such rankings. “None of them use local employment results or student satisfaction levels that are a better guide to the likely student experience.” The target market (yes, markets, rather than learning; units, rather than students), was China. “Chinese students pay high fees to attend universities with a top 100 rank. Universities use international student fee revenue to increase research output, which in turn drives ranking results.”
Other, more useful measures should be considered in any worthy ranking exercise, shifting the focus away from crude data sets of false production and falsely attributed authored research (the more multi, the less individual) to the coarsened realities of the classroom and workplace. The process of transmitting knowledge and tutoring the mind to seeking it knows no ranking or metric. But the environment encouraging that undertaking is essential. Not having it is crippling, a genuine stripping of the faculties. Focus, then, on the instances of bullying and persistent harassment by dim witted administrators and academic mediocrities, spearheaded by that largest, least degreed university department of all, Human Resources. Or institutions that tend to show a hunger for industrial conflict regarding unsafe, distressing work conditions. Rank them accordingly, and witheringly. And whilst at it, consider the salaries of obscenely remunerated vice chancellors and their slobbering underlings. Again, consider the dismal hierarchy and publish the figures.
The findings of the 2025 Australian Universities Census on Staff Wellbeing are instructive and consistently dismal. The technical report of the census, authored by Adelaide University’s Maureen Dollard and colleagues, considered the responses from almost 11,500 staff from 42 universities (an estimated response rate of 7.65%), and the ranking of 36 universities against psychosocial safety benchmarks. All universities recorded PSC (Psychosocial Safety Climate) levels in the “high” or “very high-risk” categories. Of these, 30 were found to be high-risk PSC, with six in a very high-risk PSC category. “Across the sample 76% of staff reported risky PSC levels – more than double the rate in the general workforce. In our sample, 8,719 university personnel reported high- to very high-risk PSC.” We can always quibble about how the quantum of such measures are arrived at, but in environments where surveillance thrives, hatred of dissent flowers, constant behavioural invigilation is encouraged, and a terror of terminated employment and reputational shame hovers, academics, instructors and their tutorial assistants are only giving an inkling of their mental ruination.
Assessing the merit of universities in any league system can also focus on their structural ordering, their, as it were, degenerate morphology. Consider universities keenly dedicated to bulking administration over teaching and researching, creating a plethora of regulations and protocols that serve to kill thought in favour of an arid process that confuses meetings, spreadsheets and Five-Year Plans of Stalinist inspiration with enlightenment and learning. Spot the process, spot the commissar bureaucrat. The Bureaucratic University Rankings would give a far better picture and make far more interesting reading. Over to you, dear readers, to come up with a list of other dire hopefuls.
Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He currently lectures at RMIT University. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com
