The Times Higher Education made a big play about “solidarity with Ukraine, and our rejection of Russia’s aggression” back on 2 March, 2022 and said they will keep the situation under constant review. Despite all that has happened since then nothing seems to have changed in the THE response and they continue to promote Russian universities in their current league tables. They seem to have taken no action at all to reduce the THE Student promotion of Russian universities with detailed information about the institutions being routed through their partner in inaction Study Portals.
It’s a little like a Matryoshka (commonly known as Russian) Doll where the parts are nested inside each other so you can’t see the entire thing at once. The start is when a student searches on the THE Student site and finds that there are 359 courses in the Russian Federation and they are all given equal prominence to any other course.
The curious student clicks a specific course, say on Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, and finds that they can study this in Russia. The neat trick is that they have to go off to the Study Portals site to pursue their enquiries so THE can presumably say it is not having specific publicity about the institution on its site.
A month or so ago Study Portals said it was “terrified and upset at our core seeing the war in Ukraine unfold” but was cautious to not say anything about taking action to even reduce the prominence of Russian universities on its website. So here is the link from THE Student promoting study at Peter the Great St Petersburg Polytechnic University (SPbPU).
It probably goes without saying that Andrey I. Rudskoy, Rector of the University is one of the signatories to the infamous statement from the Russian Union of Rectors saying it is “..very important these days to support our country, our army, which defends our security, to support our President…”
Rector Rudskoy also comments in an interview that league table rankings are “a marketing tool for attracting external audiences and working with academic reputation”. His position echoes that of the Russian government in their desire for credibility and prestige through rankings. So it is no real surprise to see Study Portals focus on its rankings position.
And then the whole circle becomes complete with the list of league table rankings which Study Portals will be able to continue even if the Ukraine war goes on until next year because the THE are doing nothing to suspend Russian universities from their rankings. QS and US News and World Report also continue to promote the institutions.
The page goes on to tell us about Russians who have become globally famous. “From athletes like Anna Kournikova and Maria Sharapova, to composers like Rachmaninoff, Tchaikovsky, or Shostakovich, to great authors like Nabokov, and Dostoyevsky (and all other “-evsky”s, and “-ov”s and “-ova”s), Russia gave us of the most influential people in history.”
Sharp eyed observers will note that of the two living people one became a US citizen in 2010 and the other has lived in the US since she was seven. The others are all dead and there is a conspicuous failure to mention the Russian who is the most globally influential and notorious at the current time. The word omission in the sentence probably reflects the care and attention to detail but does nothing to hide the flimsiness of the insight.
That’s it really. There are no notes on any of the pages to suggest that students might be wary of attending a country where they can be carted off to jail for using the world “war”. No reflection of the “assault on academic freedom” in Russia has accelerated in recent years with universities having their licenses suspended, students expelled, Government control of foreign academic collaboration and prevented academics attending international conferences.
Matryoshka dolls are often carved to reflect a theme and embody the concept of an idea within an idea. The idea that THE Student and Study Portals seem to be capturing is that everything is normal and there is no reason to raise realities or suggest that anything is amiss. That seems quite wrong.
When Simon Rattle was interviewed about his move from the Berlin Philharmonic to the London Symphony Orchestra he made the point, “There are a few great orchestras in the world, thank goodness. Although some people do put them in ranking order, it’s not like a snooker match. Each orchestra has different things to offer. In some ways these two orchestras are as different as you can imagine.” He went on to comment that, “So many of the things I believe deeply in, including this idea of access for everybody, that education and growth should be at the centre of an orchestra, are exactly what the LSO have been doing.” Universities share some characteristics with orchestras and access, education and growth should always come before rankings.
Regrettably, the University of Southampton’s recently published strategic plan is a reminder that some universities are willing to consider the empty credibility of league tables as equal to the needs of students, communities and society. However, my review of 50 UK university strategic plans suggests that most are avoiding the temptation of putting rankings as a measure of performance, with the Principal and President of King’s College London even writing in a preamble to their plan, “This is not about league tables but about the real contributions we make to the world around us.” Some who have built their measurement around league table rankings are finding that their statements are not ageing terribly well.
University of Southampton
The University of Southampton has been good enough to leave the September 2021 Consultation Draft Strategy on its website so it is possible to see how it developed a more bombastic tone that leaned towards rankings as a sign of success. For example, the draft Purpose and Vision’s rather modest “we aspire to achieve the remarkable” becomes the heroic “we inspire excellence to achieve the remarkable”. Even this is slightly less overstated than Queen Mary University’s, “the unthinkable, achieved”.
A triple helix of Education, Enterprise, Research becomes more convoluted with the insertion of Knowledge Exchange (KE) in front of Enterprise to make it, more logically, a quadruple helix. The Research England’s Knowledge Exchange Framework confirms KE as reflecting “..engagement through research, enterprise and public engagement.” so it could stand alone. One suspects that some enterprising (sic) apparatchik suggested that you can’t have a PVC Research and Enterprise without using the word (perhaps PVC Research and Knowledge Exchange would be a better option).
The draft suggests that the “suite of KPIs, should position us to achieve a stretching ambition of being a top 10 UK and pushing towards a top 50 internationally recognized university..”. There is much less room for doubt in the final version where “..success will be Southampton positioned as a top 10 UK and towards a top 50 internationally recognised university..”. One oddity in all this posturing is that the University’s website home page carries a statement about being a Top 15 UK University; Top 100 in the World but takes you to a page of rankings where they are shown as a Top 16 UK University. This is presumably because they think the Sunday Times is more credible than the Complete University Guide (where they are 15th).
Not In a League of their Own
The University of Southampton is not on its own in having league table aspirations and the table below shows others in the sample of 50 who are explicit about ranking being a strategic plan objective. The point here is that if something is in the strategic plan you would expect a university to devote time, money and effort specifically towards achieving it. It is quite different to prioritising what is best for the student, the community or the great global challenges.
Many universities focus on self-improvement through enhancing their performance in, for example, the National Student Survey or Research Excellence Framework or through measures such as financial stability, attrition rates and graduate outcomes. This seems more reflective and service oriented than deciding to compete in myriad and meaningless ‘best of’ tables that have little direct relevance to students or staff. It is noticeable that universities in the Russell Group are more likely to cite rankings as a performance criteria which suggests they may be a little insecure about their credentials to be in a Group that claims members as “world-class, research-intensive universities.”
Several of those reviewed have, somewhat sneakily but probably wisely, left the provenance of their measurement to be chosen at the discretion of a future Vice Chancellor. It is also relatively easy to sign off on an heroic objective if you know you will not have accountability for delivering it. Others have nailed their colours firmly to a specific mast and may regret it.
Cardiff’s approach may have looked reasonable in 2018 when the strategy was launched and they were in the 101-150 grouping for the AWRU (they are now in the 151-200 group). However, the most recent tables show they have failed to achieve one top 100 international ranking and their current Times/Sunday Times rank is 35. The strategy runs until 2023 so there may still be time and it’s always possible to blame the pandemic but the next iteration of their strategy may be slightly less prescriptive.
The University of East Anglia says, “We also recognise the importance of league tables and will focus on consolidating our position as a top 20 university in all of the main UK university league tables.” Regrettably, the most recent round of league tables finds them at 22 in the Complete University Guide, 41 in The Guardian, 26th in the UK in the THE World Rankings and the THE Table of Tables, and, 27 in The Times/Sunday Times. Not one top 20 place to consolidate as yet but the strategy allows until 2030 to put things right.
One observation is that the University of Warwick, which seems obsessed with league table measurements on the front page of its website, does not explicitly suggest that success will be measured by them – its main claim seem to be that it will be ‘larger than now’. Another would be that UCL is currently in a consultation about its 2022-2027 strategy as a contribution to “maintain the trajectory established by UCL 2034” and uses league tables to highlight issues as part its discussion papers. UCL’s approach is rich in content and may be worth a review by anybody looking to write their own strategy or simply to understand this end of the higher education landscape.
The Things They Say
No review of Strategic Plans would be complete without reflecting briefly on the tendency to reach for the most hyperbolic forms of expression to convey even the simplest of ideas. It is as if the universities are writing the higher education version of the September Dossier rather than setting out a sober-minded and responsible plan. For some there is a reflex to state the blindingly obvious as if it were the musings of a Zen master:
There is increasing evidence that students consider other factors more important than league tables, so for universities to place them as a key measure seems more about internal vanity than external need. INTO University Partnerships claimed recently that research shows “Gen Z students have adjusted their focus from rankings to outcomes amid COVID-19” and even Universities UK has got round to suggesting eight “core metrics” which could easily form the basis for both degree and institutional measurement . Regrettably, this has not stopped some relative newcomers to the rankings party presenting machine learning and AI as the answer to achieving transparency, objectivity and non-gameability so the merry go round continues.
Making league table positions a measure of university strategy puts marketing before meaning or Style Over Substance (a new SOS for the sector). I have discussed views on the most obvious failings in “Keep Your Virtue…Ignore the Reputation Rankings” and “Rank Hypocrisy” and it is good to see that most of those reviewed seem to recognize the vacuousness of this form of measurement. To place ranking as a strategic ambition diverts time, energy and money away from delivering results for students, partners and the great global challenges.
NOTES
* The review of 50 University strategic plans considered documents publicly available on their websites. A combination of search mechanisms and text review was used to determine if league table rankings were specifically and meaningfully mentioned as an objective of the plan. A number of strategic plans reviewed mention current league tables in their text but do not elevate them as a specific strategic objective. The author is pleased to consider any authoritative challenges to the material identified and will post updates/corrections if they prove to be valid.
**The review was based on the documents identified as the main strategic plan of the university in question. It is recognized that operational plans at theme e.g. research, or school of study e.g. biological sciences, may suggest objectives related to league table rankings.
***The review focused on references to league table rankings identified as THE World University Rankings, AWUR, QS University Rankings, the main UK newspaper rankings e.g. Times/Sunday Times, Guardian etc or more broadly as, for example, “key global rankings”.
A picture of the Board of Times Higher Education (THE) has been doing the Twitter rounds and attracting attention because of its lack of diversity*. THE has been part of the higher education landscape since 1973 but since 2012 has developed its role as a provider of league tables on a plethora of issues. It’s developing combination of data services, branding and hiring services saw it bought by Inflexion Private Equity in 2019.
Much of the chatter on Twitter has simply posted the picture and danced around the implications for a business that claims to generate 320,000 online page views and visits from 2.8m “…academics, university leaders, students and their families” each month. These are big numbers and THE’s intention to exploit the data generated was made clear by its Chief Development Officer in recent reporting in the PIE and elsewhere. For an organization holding that much potential power and authority in higher education there is arguably a responsibility to consider positive steps on diversity, equity and inclusion at Board level.
This is particularly so when THE has made a great deal of its latest Impact Rankings league table judging universities around the world on their commitment to the UN Sustainable Development Goals. It may be worth the Board considering Goal 5 – Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls. Target 5.5 sums it up by saying – “ensure women’s full and effective participation and equal opportunities for leadership at all levels of decision-making in political, economic and public life”
Several other Development Goals imply a wider consideration of equity, diversity and inclusion but Goal 10 focuses on reducing inequality within and among countries. Specifically, target 10.2 says “..empower and promote the social, economic and political inclusion of all, irrespective of age, sex, disability, race, ethnicity, origin, religion or economic or other status.” Even Blackrock, possibly the world’s largest asset manager, has commented “..we expect companies in all countries to have a talent strategy that allows them to draw on the fullest set of talent possible,”
THE operates as part of Bologna Topco Limited which may be a slightly inside joke about the University of Bologna’s claim to being Europe’s oldest university having been founded in 1088. Or possibly the Bologna Process signed in 1999 to ensure comparability in the standards and quality of higher-education qualifications across Europe. It’s worth considering the Statement of the Fifth Bologna Policy Forum to see the commitment to fair access both in higher education and employment.
As one would expect of any company Bologna Topco Limited the Director’s Report contains some fine words on issues of equal opportunities. However, they are placed, even in the revised version of the Annual Report under the heading – Employment of Disabled Persons – which might suggest that insufficient attention is being paid to what this might really mean. None of this is intended to suggest a lack of sincerity in the Board’s thinking but attention to detail and action are equally important.
Good intentions may have been captured in the inaugural THE Live session with HSBC UK that asked: “What action do we need to take to ensure that every voice is represented at a senior level?”. For reference the HSBC UK board membership is available and people can make up their own mind about it but their policies and targets on inclusion and diversity seem clear. But searching the THE site does not provide much detail on their own approach or ambitions in this area.
Universities have come under significant pressure to increase diversity in their senior academic and administrative ranks for many years. It is particularly ironic in the current context that the THE Student noted on International Women’s Day this year that “It is striking that still only a few of the world’s top universities are led by women.” It’s World University Rankings showed that only 41 of the top 200 universities were run by women.
It may be time for universities to do their own due diligence on the way that THE is reflecting the need for greater diversity and inclusivity. There is the potential for a powerful, united approach, perhaps led by UUK and the NUS, to put pressure on THE to begin to reflect at Board level the drive for equity, inclusion and diversity that is holding so much of the world’s attention. It is the brands, reputation and attention of universities that hold the key to THE’s future and that power should be exercised for good purposes.
*For colleagues not on Twitter this is the picture that was circulating. I would be happy to credit the copyright holder if provided with authoritative details. The Board membership is the same as the Active Director list for Bologna Topco Limited at Companies House in the UK.
It is reasonable to note that Ms Fabrizia Rizzi was a non-executive director of THE for three months (according to her LinkedIn profile) from February 2021 until her resignation in April 2021. At the time she was an Assistant Director of Inflexion but moved on to another company in May 2021.
It is standard to hear a manager in the English Premier League say “the table doesn’t lie” as they bemoan their lowly position or celebrate their success. By contrast it has been equally standard to hear university recruiters put the case that various league tables are wanting in terms of nuance, specificity or even veracity. But it may become even more complicated if university league table compilers have a direct, commercial interest in the outcome of the table and its impact on students.
In a recent article in The PIE, the Chief Development Officer of Times Higher Education (THE) outlined plans for millions of international students who consult its rankings website each year. He said, “We want to stay top of the funnel and maximise the number of students coming to the site. What we will then do is identify a network of complementary, trusted partners that we will send those students to.” The potential for universities to find themselves excluded or obliged to pay large sums for access seem obvious.
Regulators, governments and the sector’s networking bodies would do well to consider whether this manipulation of the recruitment process through commercially driven league tables is in the interests of the institutions and the students. Back in October 2018 the Office for Students Director of External Relations wrote of the “challenge for policymakers….providing information responsibly and well as accessibly” but it is difficult to see any action to head off the private sector. Allowing brands that have been built with substantial public funding to be used as click-bait providing a return to private money certainly does not seem the best way forward.
Selective, Subjective and Subject to Manipulation
It is equally troubling to think that students may find themselves railroaded into choices by an organization that decides how the league table is compiled and has commercial partners who may have more than a passing interest in the result. Elsevier have quoted Lydia Snover, director of institutional research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, as saying, “every ranking is based on the available, comparable data, and is built on the subjective judgement (over indicators and weightings) of its compilers.”. Even when league tables are independently audited, consulted upon and done with good intentions they are about choices.
UC Berkeley’s Center for Studies in Higher Education has suggested that “universities with frequent QS-related contracts experienced much greater upward mobility in both overall rankings and in faculty-student ratio scores over five years in the QS World Rankings”. HEPI’s president, Bahram Bekhradnia, did not find this a surprise and noted, “QS is a commercial organisation. They’re there to make money and their rankings are not objective.” The higher education sector, while complicit in working with rankings media, is aware that this is a double-edged sword, and it may be that commercial imperative is sharpening one side.
Those factors are made worse by the documented cases of universities deliberately manipulating the data they submit in order to secure a place higher up the ranking. A University World News article in 2019 highlighted how the University of Oklahoma had been supplying US News and World Report rankings with incorrect information for nearly two decades. Occasional errors seem forgivable but the more complex and wide ranging the tables the more scope there would seem to be for manipulation.
Legitimization and Lost Perspective
It seems a long time ago that in the late 1990s a few national UK newspapers would produce university league tables once a year as part of their wider agenda of news coverage. But since the early 2000s league table compilation and publication has become increasingly central to the activity and business model of some HE sector-oriented media organisations. Universities have played their own part in legitimizing the ranking races that may undermine their reputation and their ability to compete for students.
Many university planning offices have also spent hundreds of hours analysing league table performance and working to advise their senior colleagues on the levers that can elevate the institution’s position. It would be difficult to believe any Vice Chancellor who says their university’s league table performance is not considered in strategic discussions. League tables have become silent and increasingly oppressive enforcers influencing decision making, reputations and student experience.
It is certainly plausible that one of the factors influencing grade inflation at UK universities has been the weighting of a ‘good degree’ in the league tables. When one university sees a perceived competitor getting league table marks for awarding a higher proportion of ‘good degrees’ the argument to amend marking criteria can be positioned as not disadvantaging students. Almost without realising it institutions and academics may find their autonomy compromised by external factors.
Methodology, Misalignment and Misunderstanding
Over and above that, the dizzying array of league tables has become a way for compilers to open new routes for advertising income and securing influence. Universities under 50 years old may welcome the chance to trumpet their performance against similar institutions and it allows the sector to applaud its own achievements. But when high placings are used as advertising and marketing fodder to attract students the institutions are validating a process which is almost entirely out of their control and where interests may not be aligned.
The QS Rankings also began in 2004 and now covers 11 main categories, with several similar to THE but some noticeable differences such as Employability and System Strength. They have built a student-facing event series – the QS World Tours – to bring students together with admissions directors at events. Conferences and consultancy services also build out of the rankings as a source of revenue.
The variability of methodology that universities are trying to deal with shows in the league table results. The THE and QS most recent “top 10 global universities” and “top 10 under 50 years old” show seven as being the same in each category but three different. It’s a discrepancy which seems unhelpful if you are a student really wanting to know which were the best of breed in either category.
So, even when compilers are gauging similar categories they are making subjective choices about what to include, how to weight it and whether it will be important to their readers. But in what is largely a game of statistical musical chairs there is some evidence that there are also fundamental misunderstandings about what is driving the performance of institutions. Research by QS has suggested, for example, that students believe that a university’s ranking is substantially linked to employability of graduates when this only makes up a small element of the overall score.
It seems indisputable that league tables have become very big business for organizations that compile them and are influential enough to be a source of power over university decision making. The prospect of them being leveraged to influence student choice and the recruitment potential of institutions has been made clear. An informed, open discussion leading to collective action by the sector would be a step towards restoring balance.
