Abstract
This article, the first of a duology on the phenomenon of the international race on global university rankings, and the second part on the application thereof on the South African case offer an overview of and reflection on the rise of the phenomenon of global university rankings. A basic theorem of the scholarly field of comparative and international education is that education systems are the outcome of societal contextual forces. The rise of the global university rankings industry can, therefore, be understood only against the contemporary societal contexts in which universities are embedded. In the first section of this article, I identify and discuss contemporary societal trends that stimulated the rise of the global university rankings industry. These are globalisation, what Thomas Friedman calls a “flat world”, the neo-liberal economic revolution, nascent knowledge economies and the Fourth Industrial Revolution. In the second section of the article, the various functions of the university in society are explained. These are teaching and learning of various branches of learning at the highest level, research, service, innovation, cultural preservation, maintenance and development, and social critique.
Thereafter, the indices of four global university ranking systems are discussed. These four global university ranking systems are the Academic Ranking of World Universities (also known under its acronym ARWU or as the Shanghai Rankings), the Times Higher Education rankings, the Quacquarelli Symonds rankings and the Ranking Web of World Universities conducted by the Spanish National Research Council. The first three have been selected as they are widely regarded as the three most authoritative global university ranking systems. The last one has been included because, unlike the first three ranking systems, which include only the top universities in their rankings, it includes every university in the world in its system.
Global university ranking has attracted its share of criticism. The first point of criticism is that these rankings undermine the autonomy of universities (a key principle for the existence and operation of a university) and that these rankings do not consider the contextual uniqueness of every national higher education system and every university. This criticism is against the principle of global rankings. A second set of criticism is against the metrics used to rank universities. Much criticism has been expressed against the high premium attached to the research function of the university to the neglect or even downright exclusion of the other functions thereof. On the research function itself there is also criticism that the global rankings tend to measure the research stature of a university by means of citation impact or bibliometric indices. This is a reductionistic, objectionable way to measure research impact. The impact of research on the improvement of practice, or on improving teaching and learning at a university, for example, is neglected or excluded.
Also expressed is criticism that some of the cardinal functions of the university are not covered by the measurements used by the global rankings. This pertains to the function of cultural preservation, maintenance and development, and especially to the role of the university in exercising societal critique. The absence of the function of societal critique in the formulae of global rankings is cause for concern especially in the view of a wide range of serious threats, or at least challenges, facing humanity, such as the possibilities brought about by the Fourth Industrial Revolution, the ecological crisis, obscene economic inequality, the population explosion and major demographic migration.
The article concludes that during the past 30 years, global university rankings have risen from nowhere to a massive industry, occupying centre stage in the world of higher education. Given the role played by global university rankings and the effect of rankings on the operation of universities and national higher education systems, no nation and no university can afford to ignore these rankings in the contemporary world. The registration of universities on the global rankings has a major bearing on students’ choice of a university, on the employment prospects of graduates, on the ability of a university to draw research funding and on the ability of a university to recruit quality staff. The ranking of a nation’s universities has a major bearing on the international prestige of a country and its “soft power”. However, when the achievement of a nation’s universities on global rankings is investigated and evaluated, there are two important pre-conditions. The first is to understand that these global rankings are unbalanced and incomplete in the sense that they do not measure all the functions of a university, and with respect to those that they do measure, their measuring instruments are not above criticism. The second proviso is that when the registration of an institution or national higher education system on global rankings is evaluated, the contextual blindness of these rankings as a serious shortcoming should be acknowledged. In a balanced and nuanced assessment of any university, the imperatives and impediments of the societal context in which such a university finds itself should be thoroughly factored in. The global rankings were developed for and within the context of universities of the Global North. The societal context and the higher education environment of the Global South, of which South Africa is part, differ grossly from those of the Global North. There is even a school of thought among scholars of higher education that the pursuit of global rankings by universities in the Global South constitutes a force promoting the re-colonisation of universities in the Global South. Universities and national education systems cannot be fixated solely on the pursuit of high slots on global rankings. Therefore, in the follow-up article, in which the registration of South African universities on global rankings will be investigated and evaluated, the contextual framework in which South African universities find themselves will first be made clear.
Keywords: comparative and international education; equal education opportunities; global university rankings; language medium of universities; universities