<
https://www.socialsciencespace.com/2025/08/stop-the-university-ranking-circus/>
"It’s that time of the year again. Some 50 percent of your academic LinkedIn
connections share they are “happy” or even “thrilled” that their institution
went up some places on the recently published Shanghai Ranking (officially
known as the
Academic Ranking of World Universities), while the other 50
percent remain remarkably silent. Marketing departments of the climbing
universities produce hyped-up press releases and journalists fill their pages
with clickbait articles about “the 100 best universities in the world” and “the
10 biggest risers and fallers.” In response, some critics write op-eds about
the fact that rankings are ridiculous, and that’s that. Everything’s quiet
again until the next ranking comes out and the circus starts all over again. I
argue that we should ignore rankings as academics: they are misleading and
harmful to academic values.
In our quantified society, it may seem as if something is only important and
true if there’s a number attached to it; a metric, ranking score, or
percentage. Measures and quantifications of various sorts come with an aura of
objectivity, so, seems the idea, we had better take them seriously. This
widespread trust in numbers is one of the reasons they are so popular, but it’s
also why we should be critical of them. While many arguments can be formulated
against university rankings, I’ll focus here on three."
Via Christoph S.
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
