tag:theconversation.com,2011:/au/topics/rankings-1615/articlesRankings – The Conversation2022-06-27T12:25:23Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1849212022-06-27T12:25:23Z2022-06-27T12:25:23ZBusiness schools get a bad rap – but a closer look shows they’re often a force for good<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/468492/original/file-20220613-19-9yinfb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C5123%2C3405&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Business schools are starting to emphasize societal impact.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/student-listening-in-college-classroom-royalty-free-image/591404157?adppopup=true">JGI/Tom Grill / Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>There is no shortage of books critical of business schools. The titles leave little doubt about how much disdain the authors have for the schools meant to prepare future leaders in business. </p>
<p>Consider books like “<a href="http://www.plutobooks.com/9781786802408/shut-down-the-business-school/">Shut Down the Business School: What’s Wrong with Management Education</a>,” or “<a href="https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501742071/nothing-succeeds-like-failure/">Nothing Succeeds Like Failure: The Sad History of American Business Schools</a>.”</p>
<p>For criticisms of a specific school, there is “<a href="https://www.harpercollins.com/products/the-golden-passport-duff-mcdonald?variant=32121685671970">The Golden Passport: Harvard Business School, the Limits of Capitalism, and the Moral Failure of the MBA Elite</a>.”</p>
<p>These books lament the failure of business schools to develop ethical business leaders and to address societal concerns.</p>
<p>In a February 2022 address to business school deans, Dartmouth management professor Sydney Finkelstein piled on by <a href="https://www.aacsb.edu/insights/articles/2022/02/whats-wrong-with-business-schools-today">criticizing schools for not producing research</a> that has an impact on society.</p>
<p>The title of his talk spared no one: “Big Scam? What’s Wrong with Business Schools, Business School Faculty, and the Study of Management.”</p>
<p>My recent field study of legendary business school professors, published in “<a href="https://www.routledge.com/Seven-Essentials-for-Business-Success-Lessons-from-Legendary-Professors/Siedel/p/book/9781032034447">Seven Essentials for Business Success: Lessons from Legendary Professors</a>,” tells quite a different story. </p>
<p>In my effort to identify the best teaching practices, I also found that the star professors profiled in the book are deeply involved in activities outside their traditional classrooms that have a positive impact on their students and society.</p>
<h2>Beyond the traditional classroom</h2>
<p>Stanford emeritus accounting professor Charles Lee, for example, has helped bring the <a href="https://www.veritas.org/">Veritas Forum</a> to campus. This organization encourages students to address fundamental questions, such as “Who are you?” “What are you doing here?” and “Where are you going?”</p>
<p>In talks to students at universities around the country, he stresses that “<a href="https://www.dailyuw.com/news/cauce-students-aim-to-redefine-happiness/article_33564340-e270-11e4-935b-af384c76cb3e.html">you are not your resume</a>.” Instead of their obsession with educational and professional accomplishments, Lee encourages the students to use other metrics, such as virtue, to define success and happiness in life.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Stanford professor Charles Lee urges students to reexamine notions of professional success.</span></figcaption>
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<p>In a similar vein, business law professor Richard Shell co-founded the “Purpose, Passion, and Principles Program” at Wharton, the business school at the University of Pennsylvania. The program seeks to encourage students to reflect on how they define success and happiness. One student observed that the <a href="https://mba.wharton.upenn.edu/story/p3-purpose-passion-principles-wharton/">program has motivated her</a> to develop a “better understanding of how I define both happiness and success in my personal and professional lives.” </p>
<p>The profiled professors are also involved in activities that benefit society at large.</p>
<p>Strategy professor Jan Rivkin is a leader of Harvard Business School’s <a href="https://www.harvardmagazine.com/2012/09/the-strategic-context">U.S. Competitiveness Project</a>. He is active in <a href="https://www.alumni.hbs.edu/stories/Pages/story-bulletin.aspx?num=7182">training the next generation of civic leaders</a> through an offshoot of the project called the Young American Leaders Program.</p>
<p>The program inspired a work-based learning program in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Through the program, high school students get paid US$9 an hour to help make car parts at a local manufacturer. The hands-on job experience also counts toward their graduation. A program coordinator calls the program a “win-win for the students and the company.”</p>
<p>Management professor Gretchen Spreitzer is a leader at the University of Michigan’s Center for Positive Organizations, which encourages <a href="https://positiveorgs.bus.umich.edu/people/gretchen-m-spreitzer/">positive work environments</a> for employees. Organizations as varied as the NBA’s Cleveland Cavaliers, General Motors and Google <a href="https://positiveorgs.bus.umich.edu/about/impact/">use research produced by the center</a>, according to Wayne Baker, a University of Michigan business and sociology professor who serves as faculty co-director at the center.</p>
<p>And when it comes to impact, I believe Steve Kaplan’s record is hard to match. A finance professor at the University of Chicago, he started a <a href="https://polsky.uchicago.edu/programs-events/new-venture-challenge/nvc/">new venture program</a> that enables student teams in his special projects course to win cash prizes for their business plans. The program has <a href="https://polsky.uchicago.edu/programs-events/new-venture-challenge/">launched over 370 companies</a> that are still in existence and created thousands of jobs.</p>
<h2>Improving lives around the world</h2>
<p>Examples of the positive effects that business schools have on their students and society extend far beyond legendary teachers at leading schools in the United States. </p>
<p>Through a crowdsourcing experiment, the Financial Times identified business school projects that were <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/b6bcfa02-ef37-11e9-ad1e-4367d8281195">making a difference in people’s lives worldwide</a>. One of the many examples they found was a student project at China’s Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business. Students stayed in a Gobi Desert village and helped the villagers market their goji berries. Their efforts increased the villagers’ income by a third, according to the publication.</p>
<p>My research and the crowdsourcing experiment illustrate the increased focus by business schools on societal concerns that will likely accelerate in coming years. Business schools will also be expected to show social impact in order to meet
<a href="https://www.aacsb.edu/-/media/documents/accreditation/2020-aacsb-business-accreditation-standards-july-2021.pdf?rev=7f4c2893dc1e47eb91c472d9fc59b238&hash=833E7A4A1E094BADDACDAAB60CF2CD69">accreditation standards</a> put forth by AACSB International - The Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business, which accredits business schools around the world.</p>
<p>Business school rankings have been <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/00076503211016783">criticized for focusing too much on individual achievement</a>, such as their graduates’ salaries, instead of community-based results like sustainability and social purpose. An association of business experts from around the world have created a new measure called Positive Impact Rating – deliberately not a ranking – to <a href="https://www.positiveimpactrating.org/_files/ugd/d46c06_3f6a1bfcc0f746d7bf7565150ce7394e.pdf">highlight</a> a school’s sustainability and societal engagement, as assessed by students. </p>
<h2>Futures at stake</h2>
<p>Should business schools be “<a href="http://www.plutobooks.com/9781786802408/shut-down-the-business-school/">shut down</a>,” as business professor <a href="https://research-information.bris.ac.uk/en/persons/martin-parker">Martin Parker</a> has said? Do they have a “<a href="https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501742071/nothing-succeeds-like-failure/">sad history</a>,” as stated by history professor <a href="https://miamioh.edu/cas/academics/departments/history/about/faculty/conn/index.html">Steven Conn</a>? Are they really a “<a href="https://www.aacsb.edu/insights/articles/2022/02/whats-wrong-with-business-schools-today">big scam</a>,” a question raised by Dartmouth management professor <a href="https://faculty.tuck.dartmouth.edu/sydney-finkelstein/">Sydney Finkelstein</a>?</p>
<p>Business schools, like any other set of institutions, have substantial room for growth and improvement. And some business schools do end up in the headlines for all the wrong reasons. </p>
<p>For instance, a former Temple Business School dean was <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/former-temple-business-school-dean-gets-prison-term-in-rankings-scandal-11647053211">sentenced to 14 months in prison</a> in March 2022, for submitting false information about the business school’s programs to U.S. News & World Report to inflate the school’s rankings in the magazine. The <a href="https://www.justice.gov/usao-edpa/pr/former-temple-business-school-dean-sentenced-over-one-year-prison-rankings-fraud-scheme">idea behind the scheme</a>, according to the U.S. Department of Justice, was to get more students to enroll and more donors to donate money to the school. Such cases do nothing to help the reputation of business schools.</p>
<p>But when you consider the many ways that business schools are involved in the improvement of the lives of others, as my book, the Financial Times and others have shown, in my view the criticism that has been leveled against business schools comes across as one-sided and overstated at best.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/184921/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>George Siedel does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Despite being the subject of criticism and negative news, business schools do a lot of good for society, a veteran business professor explains in a new book.George Siedel, Emeritus Professor of Business, University of MichiganLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1696912021-10-15T11:35:12Z2021-10-15T11:35:12ZScandal involving World Bank’s ‘Doing Business’ index exposes problems in using sportslike rankings to guide development goals<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/426498/original/file-20211014-15-8gsd5p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=89%2C52%2C4902%2C2702&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The World Bank's ease of doing business index incentives countries to do whatever they can to improve their ranking. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/winners-podium-royalty-free-image/1139509402">Jongho Shin/iStock via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The World Bank, a <a href="https://www.worldbank.org/en/about/unit">behemoth of an organization</a> that provides tens of billions of dollars in aid to mostly developing countries, is in the middle of one of its biggest scandals <a href="https://www.worldbank.org/en/about/history">since being founded in 1944</a>.</p>
<p>The crux of the crisis relates to its <a href="https://www.doingbusiness.org/en/doingbusiness">Doing Business Index</a>, which ranks the ease of opening and operating companies in 190 countries. In September 2021, an <a href="https://thedocs.worldbank.org/en/doc/84a922cc9273b7b120d49ad3b9e9d3f9-0090012021/original/DB-Investigation-Findings-and-Report-to-the-Board-of-Executive-Directors-September-15-2021.pdf">investigation alleged</a> that senior leadership at the bank manipulated the index’s data in response to pressure from China and Saudi Arabia. </p>
<p>The scandal has already caused the bank to <a href="https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/statement/2021/09/16/world-bank-group-to-discontinue-doing-business-report">suspend publication of the index</a> and prompted calls for <a href="https://hill.house.gov/uploadedfiles/20210922treasuryltr.pdf">further investigations</a>. Some have also <a href="https://www.economist.com/leaders/2021/09/25/why-the-head-of-the-imf-should-resign">demanded the resignations</a> of officials identified in the report, such as Kristalina Georgieva, who was formerly CEO at the World Bank and now heads the International Monetary Fund.</p>
<p>On Oct. 11, 2021, the IMF – which along with the World Bank is currently holding its annual meeting in Washington – <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/11/business/kristalina-georgieva-imf.html">said it would leave Georgieva in her job</a>. </p>
<p>I’m a <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/26425479?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents">comparative legal scholar</a> who studies the <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/cf_dev/AbsByAuth.cfm?per_id=680281">rule of law</a> in multilateral institutions like the World Bank. As I show in my forthcoming book on the topic, I believe the real problem here is less about whether or not officials meddled, and more about the <a href="http://www.doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199658244.001.0001">problematic role the Doing Business Index and similar indicators</a> play in aid to developing countries. </p>
<h2>‘Everyone wants to win’</h2>
<p>The World Bank’s <a href="https://www.doingbusiness.org/en/about-us">Doing Business Index ranks</a> countries around the world across 11 different economic indicators, such as registering property and paying taxes, and <a href="https://ssrn.com/abstract=3219641">has become an authoritative source</a> for <a href="https://digitalcommons.bryant.edu/honors_finance/13/">international business and funding decisions</a> since its inception in 2002. It’s akin to <a href="https://www.usnews.com/rankings">U.S. News and World Report’s rankings</a> of colleges, countries and other categories.</p>
<p>A change in a country’s rankings can have a huge impact on how much money it receives from foreign investors. The World Bank has found that a 1 percentage point improvement in a country’s overall Doing Business score <a href="https://www.doingbusiness.org/en/reports/thematic-reports/does-doing-business-matter-for-foreign-direct-investment">correlates with US$250 million to $500 million</a> in additional foreign direct investment. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3318360">main idea behind the ranking system</a> was that it would be very simple for politicians, journalists and others to use, and therefore publicity surrounding it would prompt reforms. </p>
<p>“The main advantage of showing a single rank,” according to a 2005 World Bank staff report, is “as in sports, once you start keeping score everyone wants to win.” </p>
<p>And in effect, even though the World Bank technically has no mandate to guide countries’ regulatory regimes, in practice its index has had significant influence on how governments behave. For example, countries in <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/ruling-the-law/1A07B10358D8011B8338AB3DCDACA531">Latin America</a> and <a href="https://works.bepress.com/james_gathii1/67/">Africa</a> have restructured their entire corporate governance regimes to fit Doing Business’ <a href="https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2731&context=faculty_scholarship">one-size-fits-all reforms</a>. </p>
<p>But this wide influence has a negative side, as <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/09/26/cost-doing-business-world-bank">it serves as an incentive</a> for governments to try to “game the system – or corrupt it,” as The Washington Post editorial board put it recently. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Kristalina Georgieva sits at a table adorned with a floral bouquet during a speech" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/426499/original/file-20211014-17-1s6g2l8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/426499/original/file-20211014-17-1s6g2l8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/426499/original/file-20211014-17-1s6g2l8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/426499/original/file-20211014-17-1s6g2l8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/426499/original/file-20211014-17-1s6g2l8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/426499/original/file-20211014-17-1s6g2l8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/426499/original/file-20211014-17-1s6g2l8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">International Monetary Fund Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva was CEO of the World Bank when Doing Business rankings were allegedly being manipulated.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/GlobalFinance/d0b8ce0b687b47deb9c0d304e32e6e97/photo?Query=Georgieva&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:desc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=290&currentItemNo=0">AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein</a></span>
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<h2>Problems with Doing Business</h2>
<p>The most recent Doing Business scandal began around June 2020, when <a href="https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/statement/2020/08/27/doing-business---data-irregularities-statement">employees began spotting data irregularities</a> in two recent reports. </p>
<p>In January 2021, the law firm WilmerHale was asked to investigate. On Sept. 15, <a href="https://thedocs.worldbank.org/en/doc/84a922cc9273b7b120d49ad3b9e9d3f9-0090012021/original/DB-Investigation-Findings-and-Report-to-the-Board-of-Executive-Directors-September-15-2021.pdf">Wilmerhale said it found that senior World Bank leadership</a> pressured employees to improve China’s Doing Business ranking in the 2018 report as it sought Beijing’s support for a major capital injection. The law firm also found problems with changes to rankings of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Azerbaijan in the 2020 report but didn’t blame senior leaders directly. </p>
<p>But a big part of the problem here is that the rankings incentivize this kind of behavior, often because not all countries can enact the market-friendly legal reforms required to rise up. </p>
<p>One way they can do this is by paying the World Bank fees for “reimbursable advisory services,” such as advice on how to better implement the kinds of reforms it favors. Of course, it is not hard to see the <a href="https://www.reuters.com/business/external-review-finds-deeper-rot-world-bank-doing-business-rankings-2021-09-20">potential for institutional conflict of interest and corruption</a> here. The report noted that both China and Saudi Arabia made extensive use of these contracts while pressuring bank officials to change their rankings.</p>
<p>The bigger concerns about the Doing Business Index is more fundamental. <a href="https://doi.org/10.5131/ajcl.2008.0025">Comparative</a> <a href="https://doi.org/10.5131/ajcl.2008.0023">legal</a> <a href="https://doi.org/10.5131/ajcl.2008.0024">scholars</a>, including me, have found that the legal reforms favored by the index always appear biased in favor of systems based on common law followed by countries such as the U.S. and U.K. </p>
<p>For instance, France, one of the world’s largest economies operating under a civil legal code, <a href="https://doi.org/10.5131/ajcl.2008.0024">has performed rather poorly</a> in the <a href="https://www.doingbusiness.org/en/rankings">initial rankings</a> because of low scores on the “registering property” and “getting credit” metrics. And, in turn, that <a href="https://www.howwemadeitinafrica.com/demystifying-doing-business-in-francophone-africa/25407/">means countries such as Algeria</a>, <a href="https://www.doingbusiness.org/content/dam/doingBusiness/media/Fact-Sheets/DB19/FactSheet_DoingBusiness2019_MENA_Eng.pdf">Lebanon</a> and <a href="https://devpolicy.crawford.anu.edu.au/acde/publications/publish/papers/wp2006/wp-econ-2006-12.pdf">Indonesia</a> that built legal systems based on <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/40753084.pdf">France</a> or other non-Anglo legal traditions <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s40804-018-0116-4">are also unfairly hurt</a> by the rankings.</p>
<p>The rankings have been controversial since their very launch. Joseph Stiglitz, who was chief economist at the World Bank in the late 1990s, said in a recent op-ed that <a href="https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/coup-attempt-against-imf-managing-director-georgieva-by-joseph-e-stiglitz-2021-09">he thought it was a “terrible product” from the beginning</a>. </p>
<p>“Countries received good ratings for low corporate taxes and weak labor regulations,” he wrote. “The numbers were always squishy, with small changes in the data having potentially large effects on the rankings. Countries were inevitably upset when seemingly arbitrary decisions caused them to slide in the rankings.”</p>
<p>In other words, the Doing Business Index ends up pushing countries toward a shareholder-focused corporate and business model molded on U.S.-style capitalism. This is at odds with many other models, such as those in <a href="https://igitalcommons.law.yale.edu/%20social%20cgi/viewcontent.cgissocialsssarticle=7501&context=ylj">Japan and Germany</a>, that put more emphasis on workers and social goals like gender equality. <a href="https://doi.org/10.4337/9781788975339">Corporate governance scholars have found</a> these may be better models for some countries than U.S.-style capitalism.</p>
<h2>Does it ‘deserve to die’?</h2>
<p>The recent scandal underscores the degree to which the index doesn’t square with the bank’s wider purpose. </p>
<p>The World Bank’s <a href="https://www.worldbank.org/en/who-we-are">stated mission</a> is to “end extreme poverty and promote shared prosperity.” It was set up in the wake of the Second World War to achieve this mission through financing agreements with developing countries. </p>
<p>The Doing Business Index fails in this purpose because it compels governments to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/1023263X9700400202">commit to “transplanted” legal reforms that may not be right</a> for those countries, and in fact may end up backfiring and delivering bad outcomes for residents. </p>
<p>I’m not sure whether the index “<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-09-19/world-bank-s-ease-of-doing-business-list-deserved-to-die?sref=Hjm5biAW">deserves to die</a>” or should be reformed and shifted to another institution, such as a university, but I do believe its time at the World Bank is likely coming to an end.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/169691/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>As Director of the Program on International Organizations, Law and Development, Fernanda Nicola organizes events at American University and the World Bank on law and development that are mostly geared towards students and alumni. She also facilitates student’s internships at the World Bank and other international organizations. </span></em></p>Allegations that World Bank officials manipulated country rankings in its much-used ease of doing business index highlight a deeper problem with these types of rankings.Fernanda G Nicola, Professor of Law, American UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1616142021-06-15T14:54:35Z2021-06-15T14:54:35ZReuters’ Hot List of climate scientists is geographically skewed: why this matters<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/405887/original/file-20210611-21-xim81j.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A section of Quarry Road informal settlement in Durban after severe flooding in April 2019 where research was undertaken by local scientists.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Catherine Sutherland</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Reuters <a href="https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/climate-change-scientists-list/">Hot List</a> of “the world’s top climate scientists” is causing a buzz in the climate change community. Reuters ranked these 1,000 scientists based on three criteria: the number of papers published on climate change topics; citations, relative to other papers in the same field; and references by the non-peer reviewed press (for example on social media). The list does not claim that they are the “best” scientists in the world. But the ranking enhances position and reputation, influencing the production, reproduction and dissemination of knowledge.</p>
<p>What matters to us, as global South researchers and practitioners working in the field of climate change, is that the geography of this “global” list reveals a striking imbalance. While over three quarters of the <a href="https://population.un.org/wpp/Download/Standard/Population/">global population</a> live in Asia and Africa, over three quarters of the scientists on the list are located in Europe and North America. Only five are listed for Africa.</p>
<p>The list includes 130 of the 929 authors who are contributing to the current reports of the <a href="https://www.ipcc.ch/">Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change</a>, arguably the most influential source for climate change policy. Again, the imbalance is stark: 377 (41%) of panel authors are citizens of developing countries (95 from Africa) and only 16 of these are on the Reuters list (only two from Africa).</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/403372/original/file-20210528-23-eyqb8n.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A map showing uneven distribution of scientists." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/403372/original/file-20210528-23-eyqb8n.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/403372/original/file-20210528-23-eyqb8n.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=441&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/403372/original/file-20210528-23-eyqb8n.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=441&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/403372/original/file-20210528-23-eyqb8n.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=441&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/403372/original/file-20210528-23-eyqb8n.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=554&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/403372/original/file-20210528-23-eyqb8n.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=554&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/403372/original/file-20210528-23-eyqb8n.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=554&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Proportion of Hot List authors, IPCC authors and global population by continent.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Marlies Craig</span></span>
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<p>Climate change science dominated by knowledge produced in the global North cannot address the particular challenges faced by those living in the global South. It also misses significant lessons emerging from the global South, for example from the intersection of climate change with poverty, inequality and informality. </p>
<p>Reuters maps the 1,000 scientists, making it clear that their location is important, yet it does not reflect on what this portrays. While the list is presented as a neutral, data-driven assessment of the top climate scientists, it is silent on the questions of power, authority and inequality this map raises. Where are the global South scientists, and why are they not featuring in this analysis of influence?</p>
<p>We believe that this inequality in influence is a result of unequal access to knowledge production essentials and processes. It also reflects the unequal valuing of climate change scientists’ research focus, which for scientists in the global South is often context-specific, to improve human outcomes and achieve localised return on investment in knowledge.</p>
<p>The list elevates research that contributes to well-established bodies of knowledge on the processes of climate change, and its global and local impacts, much of which has been produced <a href="https://theconversation.com/global-south-scholars-are-missing-from-european-and-us-journals-what-can-be-done-about-it-99570">in the global North</a>. Research questions developed in and framed by the global North, for instance questions about environmental perceptions and values, often have limited application or meaning in the global South.</p>
<h2>Science from global South matters</h2>
<p>The science that is elevated by the list is not the only science that matters. Research from the global South tends to focus on solving challenges on the ground, drawing on multiple voices in local spaces and including practitioner knowledge, to co-produce solutions. </p>
<p>From our experience in Durban on South Africa’s east coast, local researchers, drawing on contextualised and decolonised global knowledge, influence the position of local policy makers and practitioners on climate change solutions. An example is research undertaken in informal settlements by university researchers with communities, which is shaping Durban’s <a href="https://oxfordre.com/naturalhazardscience/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780199389407.001.0001/acrefore-9780199389407-e-352">climate change action</a>.</p>
<p>To achieve a better global balance of important work on climate change, a list like the Reuters one could include a measure of the localised application and influence of research. What also matters is that the exclusion of ideas inhibits the production of knowledge for globally relevant innovation, transformation and action. Northern literature dominates global thinking and practice as shown through the spatiality of the list, but this science does not always provide globally relevant solutions, and often has limited application or meaning <a href="https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20200806084122205">in the global South</a>. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/global-south-scholars-are-missing-from-european-and-us-journals-what-can-be-done-about-it-99570">Global South scholars are missing from European and US journals. What can be done about it</a>
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<p>Addressing the global problem of climate change requires an engagement with the theories, knowledge and experiences from all parts of the world. Science from <a href="https://oxfordre.com/naturalhazardscience/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780199389407.001.0001/acrefore-9780199389407-e-352">the global South</a> may well provide innovative climate change solutions, but very little of this science makes it into the global conversation. The imbalance in influence, therefore, has implications for both global and local action.</p>
<h2>Global South vulnerable to worst impacts of climate change</h2>
<p>The global South is faced with the most severe consequences of climate change. Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and small island developing states are identified as key vulnerability hotpots. Sub-Saharan Africa already has a large share of the population living in multidimensional poverty. Across the continent there is a high dependence on agriculture which is predominantly rain-fed. Changing rainfall patterns and low irrigation rates are compromising these livelihoods. Rapidly growing coastal population centres are increasingly exposed and <a href="https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev-environ-102017-025835">vulnerable to rising sea levels</a>.</p>
<h2>Global literature should support global fight against climate change</h2>
<p>Much of the global literature is blind to and silent on the lived experiences of the majority of the globe. This includes extreme and multidimensional poverty, inequality, informality, gender inequity, cultural and language diversity, rapid urbanisation and weak governance, and how these intersect with climate change. An incomplete literature will miss important solutions in the global fight against climate change. </p>
<p>The most compelling story in the Hot List publication is the unequal global distribution of knowledge and expertise. But this is not acknowledged, debated or highlighted as a cause for grave concern. It may not be the responsibility of an international news agency like <a href="https://www.reutersagency.com/en/about/about-us/">Reuters</a> to solve this issue, but an agency that claims to provide “trusted intelligence” and “freedom from bias” should at least point it out.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/161614/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Catherine Sutherland receives funding from National Research Foundation South Africa, Water Research Commission, Wellcome Trust, EU</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rob Slotow receives funding from Wellcome Trust Our Planet Our Health Sustainable and Healthy Food Systems project which is working in resource poor communities in Africa examining the agriculture-environment-food nexus. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Andrew Emmanuel Okem, Debra Roberts, Marlies H Craig, Michelle A. North, and Nina Hunter do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Climate change science dominated by knowledge produced in the global North cannot address the particular challenges faced by those living in the global South.Nina Hunter, Post-Doctoral Researcher, University of KwaZulu-NatalAndrew Emmanuel Okem, Science Officer in the Durban office of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Working Group II Technical Support Unit, University of KwaZulu-NatalCatherine Sutherland, Associate Professor in Development Studies , University of KwaZulu-NatalDebra Roberts, Head: Sustainable and Resilient City Initiatives Unit, EThekwini Municipality; Honorary Professor, University of KwaZulu Natal and Co-Chair of Working Group II of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, University of KwaZulu-NatalMarlies H Craig, Biologist with a PhD in Epidemiology, University of KwaZulu-NatalMichelle A. North, Postdoctoral Researcher, University of KwaZulu-NatalRob Slotow, Professor, University of KwaZulu-NatalLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1322872020-05-24T07:44:22Z2020-05-24T07:44:22ZWe think there’s a better way to assess the research of African academics: here’s how<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/336457/original/file-20200520-152327-1ujpunf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Many African researchers feel they should do research that would be acceptable for publication in Western outlets. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Oleksandr Rupeta/NurPhoto via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In the past two decades, much has been made in academic circles about global <a href="https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20191017111952212">rankings</a> of educational institutions. Bodies such as <a href="https://www.timeshighereducation.com/world-university-rankings">Times Higher Education</a> and <a href="http://www.webometrics.info/en">Webometrics</a> regularly rank universities based on a set of criteria. These include internationalisation of faculty and students, cited research publications and awards won by scholars. </p>
<p>This ranking phenomenon has increased the pressure on academics and researchers in Africa to present their research output in publishing outlets that are perceived as highly rated. </p>
<p>Career progression – for instance, access to grants, appointments and promotions – is now tied to individual ranking. Student enrolment and funding from government and other bodies to institutions are equally being influenced by institutional ranking. </p>
<p>Since the Western world usually leads in setting the criteria, academic prestige comes from conforming to Western standards in the execution and reportage of research projects. But some African researchers are <a href="https://www.degruyter.com/view/product/547217">now asking questions</a> about the fairness, transparency and reliability of these processes of evaluation and scholarly rankings. They are also concerned about the effect of Western expectations on African societies and their needs.</p>
<p>What matters most in <a href="https://aoasg.files.wordpress.com/2017/04/measuring-what-matters-webinar3.pdf">scholarly evaluation</a> is itself a matter of enquiry. Hence the need to acknowledge and accommodate the inherent limitations of funding, access, collaboration, standardisation and other <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/097172180901500104">constraints</a> faced by developing countries.</p>
<p>The desire of scholars and institutions in Africa to fit into the Western-imposed model despite the deficit of local research support infrastructure may be counterproductive in the quest to achieve sustainable development in Africa. </p>
<p>I belong to a group of African researchers in Nigeria who are concerned about this situation. We reviewed the status quo and conducted a survey to get the perspectives of researchers and education administrators from developing countries. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.degruyter.com/view/product/547217">survey results</a> indicate that the majority of African academics are concerned about the status quo. They would support a shift in publishing practices and the assessment of researchers. Such a shift should be supported by institutional administrators and policy makers. </p>
<h2>Consequences</h2>
<p>Western indexing houses track how often research is cited and publish the metrics of most publishing outlets. For this reason, many African researchers feel they should do research that would be acceptable for publication in such outlets. </p>
<p>This can have negative consequences. For example, there’s the issue of access and copyright. A study in Africa might be of national importance. But its publication may not readily be accessible to the researcher’s contemporaries or government since the copyright might rest with a commercial Western publishing outlet. </p>
<p>This impairs the development of rigorous science and limits the exploration and expansion of indigenous knowledge for regional advancement. </p>
<p>There are other consequences to focusing on meeting Western requirements for academic research. It undermines African potential to use the continent’s resources to tackle its own challenges. And encourages “brain drain” – when experts move from Africa to the developed world. </p>
<p>Those who make the rules control the market. This is also true in publishing and academia. The bodies that oversee acceptable publication outlets, universal patents, registration of internet domain names and hosting servers are all located in the West. It would come as little surprise that this has an influence on the access and ranking of all to the advantage of Western systems and institutions. </p>
<p>Furthermore, westernisation has largely been conflated with internationalisation or misconstrued for civilisation. The negative <a href="http://www.esthinktank.com/2018/12/29/westernization-in-africa-another-perspective/">impact of this on Africa</a> is well documented.</p>
<h2>What ought to be done</h2>
<p>Our survey offers <a href="https://content.sciendo.com/view/title/568519">suggestions</a> for governments and universities. </p>
<p>African governments should monitor and limit schemes that promote intercontinental collaboration and publications at the expense of intra-African and national publications. </p>
<p>Secondly, grant-giving foreign governments and agencies ought not to dictate what and how to research. Each nation must set its developmental priorities and align scientific research with them. </p>
<p>Thirdly, universities, grant-awarding bodies and educational ranking agencies need to revise their research evaluation methods. We came up with some new, relatively simple, but broadly useful metrics to assess research. For example: </p>
<p><strong>Total citation impact:</strong> a measure of how many times a research paper has been cited per year of existence. Rather than just a number of citations as presently used, our model states the citation rate over time. Stating that an article is cited three times per year on average is more informative than noting that it has been cited six times since its publication. </p>
<p><strong>Weighted author impact:</strong> a way of rating researchers, virtually independent of their respective disciplines. It evaluates the article’s impact rather than comparing the journal’s impact with other journals in its discipline. </p>
<p>We have also called for the establishment of an African indexing house. This would track publications and citation rates of scholarly works produced in Africa. The resultant confidence, fair play and opportunities for African and other researchers could stimulate greater productivity and national development.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/132287/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Olumuyiwa Sunday Asaolu does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The desire of scholars and universities in Africa to fit into a model imposed from elsewhere may hinder development in Africa.Olumuyiwa Sunday Asaolu, Associate Professor of Systems Engineering , University of LagosLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1200572019-08-14T11:29:24Z2019-08-14T11:29:24ZIgnore liveable cities rankings – they do citizens a disservice by trying to quantify urban life<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/288010/original/file-20190814-136213-y9c0qq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C462%2C7238%2C4440&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Istanbul at sunset. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/bosphorus-bridge-new-name-15th-july-1373102216?src=2DWMovb0hCDzmtcysRPp4A-1-16">lightmax84/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>At last count, there were over 500 rankings that pit cities around the world against each other: from the most intricately measured <a href="https://mobilityexchange.mercer.com/Insights/quality-of-living-rankings">quality of life</a> indices, to infographics of how often <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2019/04/25/the-cities-where-u-s-postal-workers-suffer-the-most-dog-attacks-infographic/#56a7b6a87c9b">postal workers get attacked by dogs</a>.</p>
<p>As cities look to compete globally, <a href="https://theconversation.com/liveable-cities-rankings-how-a-global-enterprise-is-influencing-urban-change-113948">the business of ranking cities</a> has grown. In much the same way that sports clubs will pay eye-watering sums for star players to win the top prize, urban managers will buy in <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/d064d57c-df01-11e6-86ac-f253db7791c6">“starchitects”</a>, global consultancy firms and PR companies, to help them climb these city league tables. </p>
<p>Yet the only prize for reaching the top appears to be rocketing prices for housing, services, transport and food. Indeed, many cities at the top of the tables experience <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9781315272160">pronounced inequality</a>. Frankfurt, for example, is <a href="https://mobilityexchange.mercer.com/Insights/quality-of-living-rankings">ranked seventh</a> in the Mercer Quality of Life rankings, while also <a href="https://blog.euromonitor.com/income-inequality-ranking-worlds-major-cities/">scoring high</a> for inequality. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/liveable-cities-rankings-how-a-global-enterprise-is-influencing-urban-change-113948">Liveable cities rankings: how a global enterprise is influencing urban change</a>
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<p>Though <a href="https://theconversation.com/liveable-cities-rankings-how-a-global-enterprise-is-influencing-urban-change-113948">some efforts are being made</a> to address the flaws in city rankings, they continue to be <a href="https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/why-city-rankings-matter/">touted</a> as a viable means of urban analysis. But as someone who scrutinises cities closely and researches the people who live in them, I think it’s time to ignore city rankings because they do more harm than good. </p>
<p>For one thing, <a href="https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/why-city-rankings-matter/">only 1% of these rankings</a> are conducted by city governments – the rest are run by private companies. As such, there’s a risk that focus and funding can be diverted from the issues that matter to citizens, as city authorities aim to appease the rankings criteria and promote themselves on the global stage. </p>
<p>For example, while austerity continues to bite in the UK, the Greater London Authority’s communications budget <a href="https://www.london.gov.uk/about-us/governance-and-spending/sharing-our-information/freedom-information/foi-disclosure-log/foi-marketing-and-communications">has doubled</a> since 2009. All the while, rankings only ever identify a potential problem, never offer ways to address it, placing the burden on public institutions. </p>
<h2>Data domination</h2>
<p>The growing use of data-gathering technology in cities is giving authorities unprecedented amounts of information on citizens, housing, health care, transport systems, the built environment and more. As well as driving the global rise of smart cities – in all their different shapes and forms – these technologies are integral to <a href="https://citybenchmarkingdata.com/about">city rankings</a>. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/police-are-using-big-data-to-profile-young-people-putting-them-at-risk-of-discrimination-96683">Police are using big data to profile young people, putting them at risk of discrimination</a>
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<p>But as with any use of big data and AI, there’s <a href="https://www.ted.com/talks/zeynep_tufekci_machine_intelligence_makes_human_morals_more_important?language=en">a significant risk</a> that the biases of those who operate them are transposed into the results – as with technologies used by <a href="https://theconversation.com/police-are-using-big-data-to-profile-young-people-putting-them-at-risk-of-discrimination-96683">police</a> and the <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2014/2/19/5419854/the-minority-report-this-computer-predicts-crime-but-is-it-racist">criminal justice system</a>, which were critiqued for reinforcing prejudice against minorities. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/288011/original/file-20190814-136213-ks4l5m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/288011/original/file-20190814-136213-ks4l5m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288011/original/file-20190814-136213-ks4l5m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288011/original/file-20190814-136213-ks4l5m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288011/original/file-20190814-136213-ks4l5m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288011/original/file-20190814-136213-ks4l5m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288011/original/file-20190814-136213-ks4l5m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Data can be prejudiced, too.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/ssoosay/6022675436/sizes/o/">ssoosay/Flickr.</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
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<p>City rankings <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17535069.2010.524420">reinforce a fixation with data</a>. But if authorities focus on bumping certain metrics up or down to climb these league tables, at best, <a href="https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/smart-enough-city">they risk overlooking</a> the complex nature of many urban issues (such as <a href="https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/691102">homelessness</a>). At worst, they could entrench discrimination against their own citizens. Clearly, ethical checks need to be placed at the core of data-gathering developments in cities. </p>
<h2>Missing the point</h2>
<p>On a more fundamental level, ranking different cities against each other according to specific criteria destroys the essence of that city as a whole. A city is far more than a collection of how many museums it has, or how efficient its transportation system is, or how clean its water is, or how many people die in bike accidents at rush hour – or whatever other metric is used. </p>
<p>Shanghai is a world away from Sheffield, yet rankings seek to compare them using specific minute criteria with no consideration of their social, political, economic, ecological and historical context.</p>
<p>Ever since <a href="https://monoskop.org/images/e/e4/Benjamin_Walter_The_Arcades_Project.pdf">Walter Benjamin</a> walked the <a href="https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2013/10/17/in-praise-of-the-flaneur/">streets of Paris</a>, trying to analyse the social complexity of the contemporary metropolis, urban scholars have been at pains to articulate the inarticulable: what makes a city the intense, immersive and deeply emotional experience it is. </p>
<p>Cities can’t be ranked by homeliness or by the thrill we experience when viewing the sparkling nightscape from a rooftop. No measure of the rate of knife crime can help to address the deep <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-48982989">political</a>, cultural and domestic life histories of those who perpetrate it. These experiences are deeply contextual, tacit and subjective, but it doesn’t make them any less important.</p>
<p>City rankings seek to carve the urban environment up into pockets of data, to be captured, analysed and ordered. In doing so, they’re actually doing damage to the fabric of urban life that holds the city together. It’s time to experience and manage the lived reality of cities, not the ranking of them. </p>
<p><em>The article has been updated to remove an inaccurate reference regarding inequality in London, UK.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/120057/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Oli Mould does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>City rankings have become big business – but this expert thinks it’s best to ignore them.Oli Mould, Lecturer in Human Geography, Royal Holloway University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1139482019-04-11T13:13:00Z2019-04-11T13:13:00ZLiveable cities rankings: how a global enterprise is influencing urban change<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/268577/original/file-20190410-2921-10fdhir.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=7%2C7%2C5130%2C3096&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Vienna often scores highly in the rankings. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/vienna-sunset-aerial-view-above-city-537939037?src=XfUDORjSi2TbEJiY969Z3g-1-23">Shutterstock.</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Every year, the world’s most “liveable” cities are celebrated, in city rankings published by <a href="https://mobilityexchange.mercer.com/Insights/quality-of-living-rankings">Mercer</a>, the <a href="https://www.eiu.com/public/topical_report.aspx?campaignid=Liveability2018">Economist Intelligence Unit</a>, and <a href="https://monocle.com/film/affairs/quality-of-life-survey-top-25-cities-2018/">Monocle Magazine</a>. Global institutions including <a href="http://cpi.unhabitat.org/compare-cities">UN Habitat</a> and the <a href="http://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/">OECD</a> are also joining consultancies, media organisations and think tanks, in the quest to compare living standards and well-being in cities. At the last count, there were more than 30 urban liveability indexes produced worldwide, and more than 500 measures and benchmarks comparing cities. </p>
<p>Each new round of results triggers debate over the <a href="https://theconversation.com/living-liveable-this-is-what-residents-have-to-say-about-life-on-the-urban-fringe-111339">biases</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/liveability-prizes-are-nice-but-we-have-to-er-live-here-3194">blind spots</a> of these comparisons. Yet the sheer volume and variety of data and benchmarks, as well as the growing number of institutions interested in producing them, suggest that city rankings are here to stay. </p>
<p>The question, then, is how to improve the measurements used, to ensure that the rankings align with the public interest, and help those in positions of leadership – such as lawmakers, local governments and urban planners – to better understand the huge array of data they have access to. </p>
<h2>Comparisons have consequences</h2>
<p>Most city rankings weren’t intended to guide policy, but they certainly attract the attention of mayors and city leaders all over the world. Larger cities often have departments that draw on city performance measures, and monitoring teams that keep track of relevant studies to manage the risks and opportunities the results may present. A bad ranking can add significant pressure to city leaders, while positive news can help them to argue the merits of past or future policies. </p>
<p>City comparisons are also used outside government, for example by global firms looking to <a href="https://mobilityexchange.mercer.com/Insights/quality-of-living-rankings">relocate staff internationally</a> or promote <a href="https://www.zalando.co.uk/worlds-most-elegant-cities/">their expertise</a> or <a href="https://teleport.org/cities/">services</a>. Such studies are increasingly conducted by companies and think tanks as a way to engage with government clients at city and national levels.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/267671/original/file-20190404-123413-1mh2idu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/267671/original/file-20190404-123413-1mh2idu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/267671/original/file-20190404-123413-1mh2idu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/267671/original/file-20190404-123413-1mh2idu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/267671/original/file-20190404-123413-1mh2idu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/267671/original/file-20190404-123413-1mh2idu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/267671/original/file-20190404-123413-1mh2idu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Frequency of terms used in titles of rankings and benchmarks, relating to quality of life worldwide, from 2009 to 2019.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">The Business of Cities.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The rise of liveability rankings and other comparative information has generated a trove of data. Much of it is welcomed by cities confronting issues such as housing affordability, ageing populations and spikes in air pollution and congestion. </p>
<p>Rankings provide a memorable tool for organising complex information, but there are several common challenges, which can inadvertently cause them to caricature the complex realities of urban life. For example, it is difficult to compare data collected at different scales, and sources aren’t always up-to-date. Often proxy variables stand in for other attributes that are hard to measure directly.</p>
<p>Progress has been slow to address these dilemmas. Many of the organisations producing liveability comparisons lack strong incentives to innovate, since they already benefit from a captive media audience and stable revenue streams from supplying data to a trusted set of customers. New entrants try to improve on established rankings, including by crowd sourcing data and consulting the needs of residents or target demographics. But because it’s so difficult to meaningfully compare a diverse group of cities, many new studies still borrow heavily from existing datasets. </p>
<h2>Ranking risks and rewards</h2>
<p>Now and then, some liveability comparisons do open up productive discussions about how cities should be. But reflecting on <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0042098018804759">recent research</a> and practical experience with city governments, we have found some common flaws in the way city leaders use and interpret such insights. </p>
<p>For one thing, they can be tempted to use whichever ranking that tells the best story for their city, ignoring the broader spectrum of studies that reflect a more varied and complex picture. Trying to build a city’s reputation around its positions in just one or two rankings is fraught, especially if scores hinge on things that a city has limited control over - such as the weather or terrorist attacks.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/268586/original/file-20190410-2898-go8pbq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/268586/original/file-20190410-2898-go8pbq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268586/original/file-20190410-2898-go8pbq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268586/original/file-20190410-2898-go8pbq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268586/original/file-20190410-2898-go8pbq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268586/original/file-20190410-2898-go8pbq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268586/original/file-20190410-2898-go8pbq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Let’s face it: London will never have great weather.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/london-city-skyline-bright-light-on-652953889?src=F5KhnHOns_WWt0-gSCPGHg-1-0">Shutterstock.</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>City leaders also misstep when they try to draw direct comparisons with every other city. Cities have inherited geographies, climate, demographics, governance, investment capability and cultural norms, which shape the quality of life there. Tracking progress in comparison to cities that are on an entirely different trajectory is unhelpful and unrealistic. </p>
<p>Whether misuse of city rankings result in ill-conceived projects or unattainable goals, it often leads to disappointment and reduced public confidence in city policies. </p>
<h2>Filling the gaps</h2>
<p>There are paths to address these problems and measure liveability in ways that are more useful for urban leaders and benefit local people. Indicators are already evolving to include a broader set of data points including access to public transport and jobs, gender discrimination, housing affordability, democratic participation, inclusion, public space and environmental resilience. They can also consider how people experience the city differently according to ethnicity, gender, sexuality and income group.</p>
<p>Of course, simply adding up all of these measures doesn’t produce useful information and there are important choices on how to weight different metrics and represent the overall performance of a city. But incorporating these measures will raise awareness around liveability issues for residents that may have been neglected, and compel decision makers to face up to uncovered weaknesses.</p>
<p>It’s also vital to fill out the gaps in the data, which hamstring existing efforts to compare cities. Research can build the evidence base on housing, infrastructure, public spaces, social inequality, strength of community, economic resilience, quality of government and public finances. This research needs to be brought together, kept updated and made available to all. Initiatives such as the <a href="http://www.urbanobservatory.ac.uk/">Newcastle Urban Observatory</a> and <a href="http://www.gcro.ac.za/">Gauteng City-Region Observatory</a> are good examples. </p>
<h2>Liveability needs the long view</h2>
<p>For urban leaders and governments, knowing how your city’s public transport compares to another’s has some value. But it’s vastly more useful to know how recent investments, reforms and regulations have improved cities’ public transport performance across a five-, ten- or 20-year period. </p>
<p>City leaders can move beyond short term, reactive responses to rankings by observing comparisons of performance and taking on nuanced, longer-term insights about urban change. These will give better feedback on the effectiveness of existing policies, and take account of the time it takes for policies to produce measurable impacts.</p>
<p>With the <a href="https://www.un.org/development/desa/en/news/population/2018-revision-of-world-urbanization-prospects.html">majority of the world’s population now living in cities</a>, there is a great deal at stake in the measurement (or mismeasurement) of quality of life. Cities are striving to address multiple challenges: social cohesion, environmental sustainability, affordability and economic prosperity. Fixing the flaws of liveability rankings and forging ahead with new tools will be one small victory in a much larger battle to measure progress, in a way that benefits all urban citizens.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/113948/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jenny McArthur has previously received funding from Auckland Council. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tim Moonen is a Director of The Business of Cities, an advisory firm which provides guidance to city governments and businesses, including about how to use, interpret and deploy comparative city data.</span></em></p>When a city scores badly on “liveability”, it can put serious pressure on city leaders – but do these rankings really help improve life for local people?Jenny McArthur, Lecturer in Urban Infrastructure and Policy, UCLTim Moonen, Honorary Lecturer, UCLLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1077452019-02-05T11:10:32Z2019-02-05T11:10:32ZWhy have we become so bamboozled by numbers?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/255802/original/file-20190128-108334-1866nl7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/childrens-brightly-colored-number-fridge-magnets-6519877?src=Av1GlbhDvoV4mS_kMufoiw-1-15">Sxpnz/Shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In a particularly apt episode of the 1980s comedy show <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086831/">Yes, Prime Minister</a>, rehearsing for his first public broadcast, the novice prime minister asks: “Is it OK to mention figures?” The TV director replies: “Yes. Practically no one takes them in and those who do don’t believe them, but it makes people think you’ve got the facts at your fingertips.”</p>
<p>Like many other quips from the show, this <a href="https://www.springfieldspringfield.co.uk/view_episode_scripts.php?tv-show=yes-prime-minister-1986&episode=s01e02">witty remark</a> still rings true today. If a picture speaks a thousand words, a number speaks at least two thousand: it removes the need for explanation, and it signals precision, knowledge and truth. After all, numbers don’t lie. Or do they?</p>
<p>Official figures are produced to serve particular ends. Their names are mere labels, with no connection to infallible underlying stable properties. Most of the time, the statistics that politicians and the media quote do not reveal scientific facts. </p>
<p>Consider, for example, the pressing matter of national debt. Different welfare benefits make up <a href="https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/governmentpublicsectorandtaxes/publicsectorfinance/articles/howisthewelfarebudgetspent/2016-03-16">about a third</a> of UK spending. Normally, these payments are increased annually by the inflation rate to maintain their real purchasing power. Since April 2016, however, this increase was eliminated by imposing a <a href="https://theconversation.com/most-just-about-managing-families-will-find-life-as-tough-as-ever-after-the-autumn-statement-69242">benefit freeze</a>. That is, the government kept benefit payments constant, instead of increasing them with inflation. This is an element of a government austerity policy that has sparked heated opposition. </p>
<p>Interestingly, the US has also curbed benefit payments, but in a much more subtle way, which has therefore attracted less opposition. It did so by changing the way inflation is calculated, with the aim of making inflation seem smaller. This example demonstrates the flexibility of statistics.</p>
<h2>Inflation: an example</h2>
<p>So how is inflation traditionally calculated? First, the government records the change in the price of a basket of goods consumed by a typical urban family of four over a year (this is called the consumer price index, or CPI). As prices go up over the year, the basket becomes more expensive. For example, if the basket goes from US$100 to US$104, then the inflation rate is 4%. </p>
<p>Inflation is calculated by keeping the contents of the basket the same. But <a href="https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R42000.pdf">some economists argue</a> that people do not consume the same goods as prices change; they replace items that have become more expensive with items of lower price. So in the name of reflecting actual consumer behaviour, US government economists proposed to replace, for example, pricey oranges with less expensive apples in the consumption basket. This led to the calculation of a smaller inflation rate. And so by a mere change in the definition of the basket, President Barack Obama reduced government spending considerably in 2014. As a result, benefits and in turn the purchasing power of millions was reduced.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/252379/original/file-20190103-32139-b0mgkb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/252379/original/file-20190103-32139-b0mgkb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/252379/original/file-20190103-32139-b0mgkb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/252379/original/file-20190103-32139-b0mgkb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/252379/original/file-20190103-32139-b0mgkb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/252379/original/file-20190103-32139-b0mgkb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/252379/original/file-20190103-32139-b0mgkb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Measures of inflation aren’t really scientific.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-illustration/grocery-expenses-budget-consumerism-concept-shopping-1141730477?src=UTFaoVs2wRTKt_dlt2t8yQ-1-5">Maxx-Studio/Shutterstock.com</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>These are not the only two versions of inflation. Many varying measures of it can be calculated to serve specific goals. For instance, <a href="https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R42000.pdf">it has been argued</a> that the elderly have a higher change in the price of their regular consumption as a result of the high cost of medical care, and so deserve an increase in their benefits at a higher rate than the general population. </p>
<p>The same relativity applies to rankings and scores more generally. Think about employee evaluations, school rankings, movies, restaurants, consumer satisfaction. These are figures that have real effects on most people’s lives. The list of such figures is steadily increasing as more numbers can be produced faster and easier with the advancement of digitisation.</p>
<h2>A historical view</h2>
<p>Human fascination with thinking about facts and values in terms of numbers is a relatively new obsession. Take the evolution of economics. In 1700s, the father of modern economics, Adam Smith, wrote extensively on both <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/smith-moral-political/">morality</a> and <a href="https://www.adamsmith.org/the-wealth-of-nations/">economic order</a> in society. This was an economics that took a holistic view. </p>
<p>But soon, economics started vying to be recognised as a science, claiming to follow rigorous scientific methods. Whereas economics students in the mid-20th century learned about the history of economics and the various ways of calculating value, most economics students today are taught only one form of economics.</p>
<p>Public taste has changed: the focus has turned from an emphasis on quality to verifiability by quantification. It tends to be thought today that credibility demands logic and logic is processed, well, not by the heart. In this way, numbers have become our best reliable benchmark providers. </p>
<p>Nowadays, we are habituated to look for scores instead of holistic accounts. We want to see how many stars have been awarded to the places we want to travel to, the schools we send our children, the food we eat, and everything in between. Meanwhile, we worry about our financial credit score, our exam results, our financial value to our workplace or the numerical value of our carbon footprint. </p>
<p>The convenience of receiving condensed information in numbers has begun to outweigh the fear of what is sacrificed when we focus on quantification. For example, pushing schools to <a href="https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/RB9569/index1.html">teach in order to pass tests</a> because they will are evaluated on exam results has led to <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/education-41580550">lower education quality</a>. Similarly, <a href="https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/organization/our-insights/ahead-of-the-curve-the-future-of-performance-management">performance scores</a> for work evaluation has led to myopic pursuits by employees at the cost of long-term gains for both the individual and the workplace. In general, single scores, such as averages, simply ignore the nuances that differentiate us from machines.</p>
<h2>What next?</h2>
<p>Every day, all sorts of numbers are cooked up in the many offices of governments, corporations, banks, academic and business institutions, for profit and not-for-profit organisations, schools, hospitals, and so on. These numbers are supposed to provide us with verifiable information in concise formats. This is an enormous industry of our times. </p>
<p>Its function is supposedly to make direct comparisons possible, as long as a given term has become a convention and has been standardised to be measured in the same way across report producers. </p>
<p>Numbers are largely viewed as holding the truth. But this is an unrealistic expectation. The validity of a number is bound to the limits of the defined structure of its production, and its existence always serves a special purpose. We would do well not to take any number at its face value.</p>
<p>So next time you come across a number, you would be wise to consider how it’s calculated, and who by. Because it’s wise to suspect that it might not have your best interests at heart.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/107745/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Shabnam Mousavi does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Numbers are largely viewed as holding the truth. But this is an unrealistic expectation.Shabnam Mousavi, Associate Scientist, Max Planck Institute for Human DevelopmentLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/999212018-11-07T11:39:09Z2018-11-07T11:39:09ZWhich country is best to live in? Our calculations say it’s not Norway<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/237513/original/file-20180921-129850-e897k4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">It's not the U.S., either.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.pexels.com/photo/antique-antique-globe-antique-shop-antique-store-414916/">Pixabay</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Every year, the United Nations releases <a href="http://hdr.undp.org/en/composite/HDI">the Human Development Index</a>.</p>
<p>The HDI is like a country’s report card. In a single number, it tells policymakers and citizens how well a country is doing. This year, Norway was at the top of the class, while Niger finished last. </p>
<p>The index first appeared in 1990. Before then, a country’s level of development was measured solely by its economic growth. By taking non-economic dimensions of human well-being into account, the HDI revolutionized the idea of what was meant by countries becoming “more developed.” </p>
<p>The HDI has been wildly successful in <a href="http://hdr.undp.org/en/content/celebrating-human-development-success">changing the way people think</a> about the development process. However, it still <a href="https://doi.org/10.2307/2808029">suffers from</a> <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jdeveco.2012.01.003">real flaws</a>. There have been numerous attempts to do its job better, including <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/padr.12205">one that we published on Nov. 6</a>.</p>
<p>Eliminating the flaws in the HDI make a substantial difference. For example, Denmark was ranked fifth in the world according to this year’s UN rankings, but our new index knocks it down to only 27th, switching places with Spain.</p>
<p><iframe id="2emkU" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/2emkU/5/" height="540px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<h2>Problems with the HDI</h2>
<p>Human development can be devilishly hard to measure. The HDI considers changes in three domains: economics, education and health. (One alternative to the HDI, <a href="https://www.socialprogress.org/">the Social Progress Index</a>, combines data on 54 domains.)</p>
<p>In our view, the HDI has three main problems. First, it implicitly assumes trade-offs between its components. For example, the HDI measures health using life expectancy at birth and measures economic conditions using GDP per capita. So the same HDI score can be achieved with different combinations of the two. </p>
<p>As a result, the HDI implies a value of an additional year of life in terms of economic output. This value differs according to a country’s level of GDP per capita. Dig into the HDI and you will find whether it assumes an additional year of life is worth more in the U.S. or Canada, more in Germany or France, and more in Norway or Niger. </p>
<p>The HDI also struggles with the accuracy and meaningfulness of the underlying data. Average income could be high in a country, but what if most of it goes to a small elite? The HDI does not distinguish between countries with the same GDP per capita, but different levels of income inequality or between countries based on the quality of education. By focusing on averages, the HDI can obscure important differences in human development. Incorporating inaccurate or incomplete data in an index reduces its usefulness.</p>
<p>Finally, data on different domains may be highly correlated. For example, the GDP per capita and the average level of education in countries are strongly related. Including two highly correlated indicators may provide little additional information compared to just using one.</p>
<h2>Our indicator</h2>
<p>We propose a new index: <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/padr.12205">the Human Life Indicator, or HLI</a>. </p>
<p>The HLI looks at life expectancy at birth, but also takes the inequality in longevity into account. If two countries had the same life expectancy, the country with the higher rate of infant and child deaths would have a lower HLI.</p>
<p><iframe id="r6a6J" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/r6a6J/2/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>This solves the problem of having contentious trade-offs among its components, because it has only a single component. It solves the problem of inaccurate data, because <a href="https://doi.org/10.3386/w16572">life expectancy is the most reliable component</a> of the UN’s index. Because GDP per capita, the level of education and life expectancy are closely related to one another, little information is lost by using a human development indicator based only on life expectancy. </p>
<p>Our index draws a different picture than the one made by the HDI. Based on data from 2010 to 2015, Norway is not on top of the list in terms of human development. That honor goes to Hong Kong, while Norway drops to ninth place. Norway ranks highly on the HDI in part because of the revenues that it receives from North Sea oil and gas, but even with that revenue, Norway’s inequality-adjusted life expectancy is not the highest in the world. </p>
<p>What’s more, on our measure, Niger no longer is last. That dubious distinction goes to the Central African Republic.</p>
<p>The UN puts Canada and the U.S. as tied at 10th place, but Canada is ranked 17th in the world using our system, while the U.S. does poorly, ranking as 32nd. This relatively higher ranking of Canada reflects the higher longevity of its inhabitants and the lower inequality in their ages of death compared to people in the U.S.</p>
<p>In our view, the genius of the HDI is too important to give up, just because of problems with its implementation. In our new index, we have provided a simple approach that is free from the problems of the HDI. There is no need to have just one measure of human development, but it is useful to have at least one without contentious flaws.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/99921/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Warren Sanderson receives funding from the European Research Council under the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under grant agreement No 323947. Project Name: Reassessing Aging from a Population Perspective, Re-Ageing. Warren Sanderson is a senior research scientist at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Laxenburg, Austria and a Professor of Economics, emeritus at Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, New York, USA.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sergei Scherbov receives funding from European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under grant agreement No 323947. Project Name: Reassessing Aging from a Population Perspective, Re-Ageing.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Simone Ghislandi receives funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under grant agreement No 323947. Project Name: Reassessing Aging from a Population Perspective, Re-Ageing.</span></em></p>Most researchers use the UN’s Human Development Index to measure each country’s progress, but that system has flaws. A new, simplified index aims to do it better.Warren Sanderson, Professor of Economics, Stony Brook University (The State University of New York)Sergei Scherbov, Deputy Director of World Population Program, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA)Simone Ghislandi, Associate Professor of Social and Political Sciences, Bocconi UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1040712018-10-03T14:10:36Z2018-10-03T14:10:36ZRethinking university rankings: we need to talk about quality (and inequality) of teaching<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/238897/original/file-20181002-85617-rznkve.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Do universities reproduce inequality or can they disrupt it? </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Each year the release of the Times Higher Education World University Rankings generates a great deal of interest, excitement – and debate.
This year all eyes are on <a href="https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/world-university-rankings-2019-results-announced">China</a> which, according to the 2018 rankings, “steps up its ascent” as “East closes in on West”. China’s Tsinghua University in 22nd place has overtaken all of its other Asian competitors. </p>
<p>Only one African institution, the <a href="https://www.timeshighereducation.com/world-university-rankings/2019/world-ranking#!/page/0/length/25/sort_by/rank/sort_order/asc/cols/stats">University of Cape Town</a>, made it to the top 200. Other good performers include University of Witwatersrand and University of Stellenbosch, which are both in the top 350. </p>
<p>But what does this mean? Parents, guardians and potential students may want to know what, if any, relationship is there between the rankings and an institution’s quality of teaching? Can we assume that highly ranked universities also have high quality teaching? And conversely, do we assume that low-ranked universities have poor quality teaching?</p>
<p>Ranking and quality of teaching has been subject of much <a href="http://www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=20180814184535721">controversy</a>. The Times Higher Education rankings and similar ones are heavily weighted for research. Teaching, which “assesses the learning environment”, accounts for only 30% of a university’s overall ranking.</p>
<p>This is then broken down into the following key performance indicators: reputation survey; staff-to-student ratio; doctorate-to-bachelor’s ratio; the ratio of doctorates awarded to academic staff and institutional income. All of these are related to input factors – what is required to teach, like academics and money. None of the indicators have anything to do with outputs – the results of teaching, for example, course success rates, time to completion and graduate employment. </p>
<p>Essentially, the rankings heavily favour research-intensive, well-resourced universities. They say nothing about the actual quality of teaching as experienced by students or academics.</p>
<p>So, is there a relationship between rankings and quality of teaching? It depends what is meant by quality of teaching. </p>
<h2>Quality of teaching as access to powerful knowledge</h2>
<p>A recent book by three British academics, <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/quality-in-undergraduate-education-9781474214490/">Quality in Undergraduate Education</a>, explores the relationship between the quality of education and institutional status. </p>
<p>At stake is the role of higher education in relation to inequality: do universities simply reproduce inequality or can they disrupt it? The authors investigated this vexed and complex issue through a three-year longitudinal study of four higher education institutions in the UK.</p>
<p>Two were “high status” institutions and two were “low status”. High status institutions were the older, research-intensive, typically wealthier universities and the low status were more vocationally-oriented universities established from 1992. The trio analysed interviews with academics and students, observations of classrooms and curriculum documentation, including assessment.</p>
<p>In contrast to the Times Higher Education rankings which focus on inputs and reputation, their definition of quality focused on outputs or products. Quality being the extent to which teaching gives students’ access to “<a href="https://eddieplayfair.com/2015/08/19/what-is-powerful-knowledge/">powerful knowledge</a>”.</p>
<p>Powerful knowledge, they argue, is when theory and everyday common sense knowledge align. Quality teaching enables students to meaningfully traverse the gap between theory and <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-class-and-social-capital-affect-university-students-92602">lived experience</a> – their own and others’.</p>
<p>The trio’s findings showed no clear relationship between university status and quality teaching. In fact, one of the low-status universities best showcased the powerful and life-changing nature of knowledge.</p>
<h2>Redefining quality and inequality</h2>
<p>The study should cause us to pause and challenge the assumptions we make about rankings, status and the quality of the student experience. Is there a relationship between the rankings and the actual quality of teaching? It depends on how quality of teaching is defined. </p>
<p>Assessing the quality of teaching in ways that can be standardised and compared isn’t simple. That’s why we often end up valuing what we can measure, instead of measuring what we value. Measuring the quality of teaching on the basis of input factors as the Times Higher Education rankings, is not enough. There are “output” indicators that can be used – for example, dropout and retention, student experience surveys and graduate employability. </p>
<p>The study also raises another question, what is the relationship between quality and addressing inequality? </p>
<p>In South Africa we know this kind of output data when separated out by race reveals persistent <a href="https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/serious-social-inequality-persists-south-african-universities">inequalities</a> with racial differentiations in academic performance. Tackling these challenges to ensure <a href="https://cup.columbia.edu/book/scales-of-justice/9780231146807">parity of participation</a> is a hallmark of quality teaching. </p>
<p>As for the Times Higher Education rankings, there may be <a href="https://www.timeshighereducation.com/blog/were-pioneering-new-way-measure-teaching-quality-across-europe">changes</a> on the horizon. New ways of measuring teaching, such as student surveys, are being piloted. Duncan Ross, data analytics director for the Times Higher Education rankings, <a href="https://www.timeshighereducation.com/world-university-rankings/world-university-rankings-2019-pursuit-more-significant-figures">announced</a> a review of the rankings’ methodology for 2020. As an example, he raised the issue of whether universities’ gender balance should be assessed and asked:</p>
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<p>Can a university that isn’t adequately serving half the population be said to be world-leading? </p>
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<p>The same question can be asked, how and to what extent are first generation university, black and minority students being served? With inequality as one of the greatest challenges of the 21st century, should this not also be a feature of world-leading universities?</p>
<p>It would be a significant advance if these increasingly influential rankings could showcase those institutions as “world-leading” who are making a contribution to social justice through the quality of their teaching.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/104071/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Suellen Shay does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>University rankings must include quality teaching and indicators that address inequality as measuring tools.Suellen Shay, Associate Professor, University of Cape TownLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1040112018-09-28T10:50:01Z2018-09-28T10:50:01ZUniversity rankings: how do they compare and what do they mean for students?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/238350/original/file-20180927-48659-mczgfq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">What university rankings can tell us.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Pexels</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>University rankings can be highly influential. They can help prospective students to narrow down their choice of institution and, of course, they also give universities something to brag about.</p>
<p>The UK’s elite institutions, Oxford and Cambridge, continue to occupy the top two posts in the latest <a href="https://www.timeshighereducation.com/world-university-rankings">Times Higher Education World University Rankings</a> And many other UK universities also appear in the <a href="https://theconversation.com/forget-university-rankings-open-days-are-the-biggest-factor-in-student-choice-87793">annual list</a> of “world class” universities. </p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/the-uk-continues-to-top-world-university-rankings-heres-why-that-matters-83671">Rankings</a> are very much an indicator of a sector that has been “marketised”. As such, they should probably come with a <a href="https://theconversation.com/students-beware-university-rankings-should-come-with-health-warnings-48353">consumer warning</a> of their own. And although many rankings now offer some explanation of their <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=F8KZxONuGXQC&pg=PA71&lpg=PA71&dq=Longden,+B.+%282011%29.+%27Ranking+indicators+and+weights%27+University+Rankings:+Theoretical+Basis,+Methodology+and+Impacts+on+Global+Higher+Education&source=bl&ots=LTSRoWRrvh&sig=4SvvVRTKNTDJt0xCbc-_mmVoAG4&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CCcQ6AEwAmoVChMIt6jIvLCeyAIVS9oaCh0nAweQ#v=onepage&q&f=false">various methods</a>, what is less clear is whether the rankings’ different viewers carefully read and understand what the methodologies do – or what is actually being measured.</p>
<p>Times Higher Education editor <a href="https://www.timeshighereducation.com/world-university-rankings/world-university-rankings-2019-evolution-and-expansion">Phil Baty claims</a> their world rankings were developed partly in response to a UK government report that lamented the tendency of British universities to compare themselves to each other rather than to global counterparts. </p>
<p>Introducing international benchmarks means that <a href="https://theconversation.com/five-ways-universities-have-already-changed-in-the-21st-century-39676">British universities</a> now need to perform even better as they enter into competition with the rest of the world – both in terms of rankings and attracting students. And in this sense, the UK is competing with both elite US institutions and rising Asian challengers.</p>
<h2>How rankings differ</h2>
<p>But has this increased competitiveness brought about a better experience for students at UK universities? The answer is complex. It involves several related questions: what do students care about – and what should they demand from their universities and their lecturers? In recent years, the question has also been posed as: what kind of experience are students entitled to? Different <a href="https://theconversation.com/university-rankings-good-intentions-image-polishing-and-more-bureaucracy-79936">rankings</a> answer these questions in different ways. </p>
<p>Students probably care about the quality of teaching first and foremost and, if UK policy discourse is a guide, <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-ranking-universities-on-graduate-job-prospects-is-a-step-in-the-right-direction-79962">how employable they will be</a> after gaining their degree. Different ranking organisations address these two issues in various ways. The Times Higher Education World University Rankings says it uses indicators that show evidence of teaching quality but does not directly address the issue of employability – which is harder to compare across countries.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.topuniversities.com/qs-world-university-rankings">The QS World University Rankings</a> – another well known league table – uses a survey of employers to determine which universities have the best reputation for producing skilled graduates. Another approach is that of the <a href="http://www.shanghairanking.com/">Academic Ranking of World Universities</a>, also known as Shanghai Rankings, which does not claim to measure either teaching quality or employability. Instead, it focuses mainly on indicators surrounding research excellence.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-uk-continues-to-top-world-university-rankings-heres-why-that-matters-83671">The UK continues to top world university rankings – here's why that matters</a>
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<p>With these different nuances among rankings, students might be better advised to look at the recently released <a href="https://www.timeshighereducation.com/rankings/europe-teaching/2018">Europe Teaching Rankings</a>. The purpose of the Europe Teaching ranking was to produce a league table that would speak more <a href="https://www.timeshighereducation.com/rankings/europe-teaching/2018#!/page/0/length/25/sort_by/rank/sort_order/asc/cols/undefined">directly to students</a> and, presumably, to their teaching staff who feel neglected by the mainstream ranking tables. But then again, although developed to measure teaching quality, some of the indicators in this ranking have <a href="http://eprints.brighton.ac.uk/17540/">been criticised</a> as measuring the wrong things. </p>
<h2>Choosing a top scorer</h2>
<p>My <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10734-017-0147-8">own research</a> shows how analysts develop these different rankings to respond to, and develop different audiences. Different rankings operate according to different “businesss models”. Some develop their products for different audiences specifically to create more opportunities to sell their expertise. Some rankings are better at this than others. </p>
<p>The Times Higher Education rankings, for example, appear to be among the more successful organisations. From a single university ranking, they now produce rankings of universities in specific world regions – such as the Asia Rankings, Young University Rankings and are even now developing rankings that address the themes of innovation and social responsibility. </p>
<p>It’s also worth noting that the results for British universities in the Times Higher Education’s Europe Teaching Rankings vary from those of UK-only rankings – such as those produced by UK newspapers such as <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/education/ng-interactive/2018/may/29/university-league-tables-2019">The Guardian</a>. The Guardian’s rankings and the other national ones are targeted at students doing their A-levels (as well as their parents) who are starting to think about university options. So quite often teaching-oriented UK universities will do better in these national rankings. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/238347/original/file-20180927-48634-u1kmqf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/238347/original/file-20180927-48634-u1kmqf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/238347/original/file-20180927-48634-u1kmqf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/238347/original/file-20180927-48634-u1kmqf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/238347/original/file-20180927-48634-u1kmqf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/238347/original/file-20180927-48634-u1kmqf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/238347/original/file-20180927-48634-u1kmqf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Findings from US research company Gallup, reveal that only 9% of businesses said university choice was ‘very important’ when it came to selecting future employees.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">shutterstock</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>These UK national rankings consider the results of the <a href="https://www.thestudentsurvey.com/">National Student Survey</a> which aims to measure student satisfaction and is broadly comparable across the UK. These rankings also show the relative performance of different academic departments. </p>
<p>So, for a British student seeking to study a particular degree in the UK, these rankings might be a better starting point than global rankings. Students from overseas would do well to examine both national as well as global rankings to get a better picture of what is on offer in the UK. The same applies to other countries.</p>
<p>Given the large number of organisations producing university rankings and league tables, the issue of whether rankings are changing universities into ever more fierce competitors with each other is of course a consideration. And while rankings, such as those released this week, can indeed keep universities on their toes, it’s easy to wonder if a more cooperative rather than competitive sector would be better for both for universities and the students they teach.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/104011/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Miguel Antonio Lim received funding from the Marie Curie Actions.</span></em></p>What university rankings mean for students.Miguel Antonio Lim, Lecturer in Education and International Development, University of ManchesterLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/949432018-05-15T13:23:28Z2018-05-15T13:23:28ZAfrica’s business schools need to be locally relevant and globally wise<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/218468/original/file-20180510-34015-z95nos.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">African business school need to achieve a tricky balance between local realities and global demands.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>If <a href="https://www.africanmanagers.org/trainingtalent">99.6% of businesses</a> in a country like Nigeria employ fewer than 10 workers, does it make sense to teach Nigerian business students how to manage Fortune 500 companies in the US using Harvard Business School case studies? This question, raised by the <a href="https://www.africanmanagers.org/trainingtalent">African Management Initiative</a> in a recent report, sums up the complex nature of the challenge facing African business schools when picking a path between global recognition and local relevance.</p>
<p>There is no doubt that business schools need to demonstrate international relevance, whether through the programmes they offer, or the content they teach. This allows them to attract international students and faculty. And, perhaps more importantly, it offers students a chance to experience international contexts. International mobility in today’s global business world is a key requirement. </p>
<p>At the same time, schools need to cater to the <a href="https://www.aabschools.com/news_items/detail/419.html">day-to-day realities</a> in their own context. African business schools operate in environments characterised by high degrees of inequality and uncertainty, a lack of skills and high rates of unemployment. </p>
<p>Ideally, they need to do both these things if they want to deliver the best possible training for the continent’s requirements. </p>
<h2>An assessment of quality</h2>
<p>One important way that business schools seek to demonstrate international relevance is through rankings and accreditations. These offer an <a href="https://www.businessbecause.com/news/mba-application/5136/mba-accreditation">important marketing and reputational window</a> to the world. And they are widely used by global schools as stamps of quality. They are also one of the major <a href="https://www.businessbecause.com/news/mba-rankings/5148/mba-rankings-economist-financial-times-qs-explained">tools</a> employed by students in choosing where to study.</p>
<p>But only a handful of schools in Africa are recognised and ranked globally. The University of Cape Town Graduate School of Business, University of Stellenbosch Business School and the American University in Cairo are the only African business schools out of 86 globally that are <a href="http://www.mba.today/guide/triple-accreditation-business-schools">triple-crown accredited</a>. This means they have recognition from the top three global accreditation bodies, the Association to <a href="http://www.aacsb.edu/about">Advance Collegiate Schools of Business</a>, <a href="https://www.mbaworld.com">the Association of MBAs</a>, and the <a href="https://www.efmd.org">European Foundation for Management Development’s Quality Improvement System</a>. </p>
<p>When it comes to rankings, only the University of Cape Town Graduate School of Business, University of Stellenbosch Business School and the Gordon Institute of Business Science University of Pretoria are recognised in the various <a href="http://rankings.ft.com/businessschoolrankings/rankings">Financial Times rankings</a> for their offerings.</p>
<h2>Useful benchmark or distraction from purpose?</h2>
<p>The process of business school accreditation is rigorous and time consuming. Schools must articulate their vision and mission and relevance and impact.</p>
<p>Schools have to submit a lot of information and an accreditation panel will spend time at a school to inspect and ensure that it is delivering what it claims to be delivering. This process can be useful because it helps schools identify and improve on weaknesses identified.</p>
<p>Accreditation bodies offer a rounded assessment of schools. The three main global assessment bodies assess performance in a holistic way. Their assessment goes beyond just individual increases in salary. They take into account graduates’ contribution to society, value creation and entrepreneurship. </p>
<p>There is a new kid on the block worth watching: the <a href="https://www.aabschools.com">Association of African Business Schools</a> which hopes to delve deeper into what African business schools are doing to develop the continent.</p>
<p>Undergoing accreditation can therefore be a highly developmental process. It can be useful as a consultancy exercise as much as – if not more than – an audit of quality standards. But the reality is that many African business schools operate with minimal resources making it challenging for them to achieve accreditation. </p>
<p>Rankings, by comparison, are easier to participate in but have received a lot of <a href="http://www.aacsb.edu/blog/2017/may/criticism-of-business-school-rankings-thrust-into-spotlight">criticism</a> including charges that they come with flawed methodologies, misleading information and a lack of transparency. They are also accused of <a href="http://www.aacsb.edu/blog/2017/may/criticism-of-business-school-rankings-thrust-into-spotlight">detracting from the social obligations</a> of schools. That’s because they tend to place little emphasis on students’ learning or societal benefits and focus almost exclusively on the short-term economic returns of their education for graduates. The rankings however, are a <a href="https://www.mastersportal.com/articles/361/top-3-mba-rankings-help-you-choose-the-best-business-school-abroad.html">criterion</a> used by potential international students when choosing which schools to apply to. They cannot be discounted. </p>
<p>Together, accreditation’s and rankings offer African business schools a valuable way to benchmark themselves against their global peers. As Professor Jonathan Jansen, former vice-chancellor at the University of the Free State, <a href="https://www.pressreader.com/south-africa/the-herald-south-africa/20180215/281913068579850">wrote</a> in a recent article, they can reveal areas in which a university can grow and improve on its scholarly work: </p>
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<p>You never really know how good you are until you are ranked against the best.</p>
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<p>Rankings and accreditation may be onerous and expensive, but if used wisely they can strengthen global credentials. At the same time they can also help business schools to hone their offerings to develop the right calibre of leadership and management to drive the development that is needed on the continent.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/94943/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kutlwano Ramaboa does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>African business schools can benefit from the rigourous process offered by global rankings and accreditations.Kutlwano Ramaboa, Senior Lecturer in Research Methodology, Director of International Relations, University of Cape TownLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/921642018-05-14T21:56:35Z2018-05-14T21:56:35ZThe secrets of immigrant student success<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/218653/original/file-20180512-34027-1kxexm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=593%2C0%2C3812%2C1789&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Both first- and second-generation immigrants in British Columbia and Ontario outperformed their non-immigrant counterparts in science literacy, in the 2015 Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development Programme for International Student Assessment. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Canada is consistently one of the <a href="http://www.un.org/en/development/desa/population/migration/data/estimates2/estimatesgraphs.shtml?3g3">top 10 destination countries for international migrants</a>. </p>
<p>More than 7.5 million foreign-born Canadians entered the country through the immigration process, according to 2016 Census data — representing <a href="http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/11-627-m/11-627-m2017028-eng.htm">more than one in five Canadians</a> and <a href="https://www.cmec.ca/Publications/Lists/Publications/Attachments/371/PISA2015_FL_EN.pdf">more than one third of school-aged students</a>.</p>
<p>Canada was also the first country in the world to adopt multiculturalism as an official policy. There are provisions within its <a href="https://www.canada.ca/en/canadian-heritage/services/how-rights-protected/guide-canadian-charter-rights-freedoms.html">Charter of Rights and Freedoms</a> that protect the rights of minority groups. </p>
<p>One might wonder — has <a href="http://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/C-18.7/">Canada’s Multiculturalism Act</a> had the desired effect of promoting positive outcomes for immigrants, particularly immigrant student groups?</p>
<p>One study, a large-scale review published in 2015, suggested that out of a group of 38 industrialized nations, <a href="http://www.mipex.eu/canada">Canada ranked first in the world for anti-discrimination policies for migrants</a>. </p>
<p>The same report also suggested Canada has favourable education policies in four key areas: Access, targeted needs, new opportunities and intercultural education for all. </p>
<p>However, this report did not delve into education policies within specific provinces. Canada is rather unique in the Western world, in that it does not possess a federal department of education. Each province enacts its own education policy. </p>
<h2>Provincial approaches</h2>
<p>Are there tangible examples that demonstrate the expression of “multicultural friendly” education policies within provincial education systems? </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/218497/original/file-20180510-34027-1aw19xf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/218497/original/file-20180510-34027-1aw19xf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=783&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/218497/original/file-20180510-34027-1aw19xf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=783&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/218497/original/file-20180510-34027-1aw19xf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=783&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/218497/original/file-20180510-34027-1aw19xf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=984&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/218497/original/file-20180510-34027-1aw19xf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=984&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/218497/original/file-20180510-34027-1aw19xf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=984&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Senator Paul Yuzyk is seen in a copied photo. Yuzyk was a Canadian historian and Senator remembered as the ‘father of multiculturalism.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Our own research, which has <a href="https://www.springer.com/us/book/9783319740621">examined the relationship between provincial education policies and immigrant student achievement outcomes</a>, suggests that the answer to this question is a resounding yes.</p>
<p>Consider the largest province, Ontario, which <a href="http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/">provides policy guidelines to teachers</a> regarding “Culturally Responsive Pedagogy,” “Antiracism and Ethnocultural Equity in School Boards” and “Ontario’s Equity and Inclusive Education Strategy.” </p>
<p>Similarly, <a href="https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/governments/organizational-structure/ministries-organizations/ministries/education">consider British Columbia</a>, which developed a <a href="https://www2.gov.bc.ca/assets/gov/education/kindergarten-to-grade-12/support/diverse-student-needs/diversity_framework.pdf">“Diversity in B.C. Schools” framework</a> to safeguard against discrimination, harassment and violence. </p>
<p>Or Alberta, which provides a curriculum framework containing provisions for belonging and identity that <a href="https://education.alberta.ca/media/3575996/curriculum-development-guiding-framework.pdf">underscore its efforts to promote diversity and inclusion in its multicultural and pluralistic society</a>.</p>
<h2>Immigrant students outperform their peers</h2>
<p>In which provinces do immigrant students thrive?</p>
<p>Our research takes a longitudinal approach, which means we look at student achievement outcomes over multiple years and based on various achievement tests.</p>
<p>We have examined achievement results from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) <a href="http://www.oecd.org/pisa/">Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA)</a> — which is regularly used as comparative measure of student achievement for 15-year-olds around the world in reading, mathematics and scientific literacy. </p>
<p>The most glaring results from PISA 2015 indicated that both first- and second-generation immigrants in British Columbia and Ontario outperformed their non-immigrant counterparts in science literacy — which was the major domain tested in the most recent survey. </p>
<p>The available data suggested that other provinces such as Alberta, Saskatchewan, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick also displayed favourable results for first- or second-generation immigrant student groups when compared to their non-immigrant counterparts.</p>
<p>Collectively, Canadian findings are surprising — given that the vast majority of immigrant students around the world <a href="https://cje-rce.ca/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/10/12.-2557-Volante-et-al.-Sept-18.pdf">possess a significant performance disadvantage</a>. Across OECD countries, <a href="https://www.cmec.ca/Publications/Lists/Publications/Attachments/371/PISA2015_FL_EN.pdf">this difference is approximately 33 points, which is equivalent to more than one year of formal schooling</a>.</p>
<p>It is worth noting that B.C. and Ontario have the highest proportion of first- and second-generation students within Canada, at 39.4 per cent and 37.1 per cent respectively — which suggests immigrant students can thrive in provinces with diverse student populations.</p>
<p>Of course, Canada’s strong performance may be partially attributed to its immigrant selection policies. For example, prospective immigrants receive points for job skills, education levels and proficiency in English or French — the two official languages. Overall, the <a href="https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/services/immigrate-canada/express-entry/become-candidate/criteria-comprehensive-ranking-system/grid.html">Comprehensive Ranking System</a> favours immigrants who are more likely to easily integrate into the Canadian economy. </p>
<p>Nevertheless, there are many instances around the world where immigrants who share the same cultural background and family characteristics do markedly better or worse in different national contexts. <a href="https://www.economist.com/news/international/21711316-immigrant-childrens-performance-varies-widely-where-immigrants-go-school-more">Research suggests that Canadian immigrants do particularly well</a> even after controlling for the pronounced influence of socio-economic status.</p>
<h2>In which schools do immigrants thrive?</h2>
<p>Our research suggests that immigrant student outcomes are influenced by a complex array of factors and school system characteristics. </p>
<p>For example, immigrants who are older than 12 tend to experience a <a href="https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783319740621">“late arrival” penalty</a> due to their language difficulties — underscoring the need for intensive language supports. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/218654/original/file-20180512-34015-3wiynd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/218654/original/file-20180512-34015-3wiynd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/218654/original/file-20180512-34015-3wiynd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/218654/original/file-20180512-34015-3wiynd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/218654/original/file-20180512-34015-3wiynd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/218654/original/file-20180512-34015-3wiynd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/218654/original/file-20180512-34015-3wiynd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Most provincial education systems take a culturally-sensitive integration approach, aiming to preserve the cultural identities of diverse populations.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Immigrants also tend to be particularly at risk within schools with a concentration of socioeconomically disadvantaged students. </p>
<p>In fact, the OECD, which is responsible for the administration of PISA, argues: “It is not the concentration of immigrant students in a school but, rather, <a href="https://www.oecd.org/education/Helping-immigrant-students-to-succeed-at-school-and-beyond.pdf">the concentration of socioeconomic disadvantage in a school that hinders student achievement</a>.” </p>
<p>Lastly, immigrant students tend to perform well when they are provided appropriate school resources and accommodated, as much as possible, within mainstream educational settings — a result that underscores the importance of school inclusion practices.</p>
<h2>The “accommodation approach”</h2>
<p>Collectively, a broad scan of provincial education systems suggests a marked preference for culturally-sensitive integration approaches that preserve the cultural identities of diverse populations. </p>
<p>This is in direct contrast to the assimilationist approach to immigration that existed in Canada before the 1960s. </p>
<p>In many respects, education policies tend to underscore a preference for fairly broad accommodations within provincial school systems. This approach is also reinforced by teacher education institutions across the country, which emphasize the importance of teaching practises (or pedagogy) and curricula that respect ethnic and cultural diversity.</p>
<p>Canada is best characterized as a culturally pluralistic society, in that minority groups are able to maintain their unique cultural identities and values within the dominant culture of non-immigrant Anglophones and Francophones. </p>
<p>Although our non-immigrant population is fairly dispersed — particularly within Canadian urban centres — it would be naïve to suggest teachers’ pedagogical approaches are not geared towards this dominant group. </p>
<p>Indeed, the famous Russian cognitive psychologist Lev Vygotsky astutely noted almost 100 years ago that the practice of <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/00131911.2011.620699">pedagogy has always adopted a particular social pattern in accordance with the dominant social class guiding its interests</a>. </p>
<p>How teachers, school administrators and provincial education systems address the challenge of promoting culturally effective pedagogy, through the promotion of evidence-based policies and against the backdrop of international achievement standards — this remains a pressing challenge for our future.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/92164/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Louis Volante received funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) for this research.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Don A. Klinger receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>lDr. Melissa Siegel works for Maastricht University and the United Nations University and regularly consults for international organization and country governments.</span></em></p>First and second-generation immigrants perform well in many Canadian provinces that take an “accommodation” approach.Louis Volante, Professor of Education, Brock UniversityDon A. Klinger, Dean of Te Kura Toi Tangata Faculty of Education; Professor of Measurement, Assessment and Evaluation, University of WaikatoMelissa Siegel, Professor of Migration Studies and Head of Migration Studies at the Maastricht Graduate School of Governance and UNU-MERIT, Maastricht UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/932762018-04-12T22:52:53Z2018-04-12T22:52:53ZStop treating students like customers and start working with them as partners in learning<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/210907/original/file-20180318-104639-1d54ru.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Students and lecturers at the University of Queensland researching 'students as partners' activities across Australian universities. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">The University of Queensland</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>University is a big investment. Students want value for money because a future of debt is scary. But there is also a danger when we talk about higher education only in financial terms. It shifts the conversation away from how universities develop students as learners, thinkers, and future leaders. It turns students into customers.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/no-university-is-not-a-waste-of-time-and-money-92263">No, university is not a waste of time and money</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Perils of treating students like customers</h2>
<p>When lecturers think of students as customers, it influences how they teach. Pushing students out of their comfort zones, challenging the logic of their thinking, or giving critical feedback on assignments are all important for learning. Fear of <a href="https://www.timeshighereducation.com/student/news/10-thoughts-academics-have-about-their-students-university-workplace-survey-2016">bad teaching evaluations</a> from students influences the extent to which lecturers challenge them.</p>
<p>Likewise for students, when they act like customers, <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03075079.2015.1127908">it affects how they learn</a>. The idea of being a customer shifts the responsibility of learning onto the lecturers, leaving students with a passive role to play. Yet, we know students need to take <a href="http://www.pnas.org/content/111/23/8410">active ownership of their own learning</a>. Numerous <a href="http://psycnet.apa.org/record/2015-13426-005">studies</a> demonstrate grades suffer – and students learn less – when they are passive learners.</p>
<p>When universities talk about students as customers, they are contributing to the us-versus-them divide. This influences the quality of learning in higher education by reducing its measure to customer satisfaction. Students who say they had a good quality university experience <a href="http://nsse.indiana.edu/pdf/EIs_and_HIPs_2015.pdf">report</a> deeper, more meaningful interactions with lecturers in contrast to transactional relationships. They <a href="http://news.gallup.com/poll/168848/life-college-matters-life-college.aspx">report</a> having lecturers who care about them - who <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/higher-education-network/2018/mar/16/students-want-most-treated-with-respect-academics-anonymous?CMP=new_1194&CMP=">treat them as people</a>.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/universities-are-failing-their-students-through-poor-feedback-practices-86756">Universities are failing their students through poor feedback practices</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Change the conversation by including students</h2>
<p>Universities that care about learning value an educational culture in which the student-lecturer relationship is at the heart of teaching and learning. Staff at these universities tend to do more than talk at, about, or survey students, they <a href="https://www.wiley.com/en-us/Engaging+Students+as+Partners+in+Learning+and+Teaching%3A+A+Guide+for+Faculty-p-9781118434581">talk <em>with</em> them</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/210908/original/file-20180318-104635-eflrjn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/210908/original/file-20180318-104635-eflrjn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=284&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/210908/original/file-20180318-104635-eflrjn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=284&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/210908/original/file-20180318-104635-eflrjn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=284&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/210908/original/file-20180318-104635-eflrjn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=357&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/210908/original/file-20180318-104635-eflrjn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=357&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/210908/original/file-20180318-104635-eflrjn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=357&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Students and staff talking at the annual Australian Students as Partners Roundtable event.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Author provided/public domain</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Recently, students and staff worked together on <a href="http://itali.uq.edu.au/content/transforming-practice-program">year-long projects</a> at UQ to re-imagine Australian university education as a partnership. Students and staff from 11 Australian universities <a href="http://rdcu.be/IhyT">reported</a> the values-based idea of partnership - students as partners - offered a counter-narrative to the all-too-common narrative of students as customers. Working in partnership was a chance for cultural change and a new way of “doing” higher education, they argued. </p>
<h2>Learning and teaching partnership</h2>
<p>Engaging students as partners is first and foremost about the values and principles of partnership: </p>
<ul>
<li><p>mutual respect</p></li>
<li><p>open and ongoing communication</p></li>
<li><p>shared purpose and passion</p></li>
<li><p>appreciation of different experiences and expertise </p></li>
<li><p>willingness to take seriously what our partners say</p></li>
<li><p>an openness to negotiate ideas, and</p></li>
<li><p>a sense of adventure about creating something new or different.</p></li>
</ul>
<p><a href="http://itali.uq.edu.au/content/about-students-partners">Core values of students as partners</a> are grounded in principles that highlight how students and staff can work together as co-researchers, co-teachers, and co-creators. <a href="http://itali.uq.edu.au/content/case-studies">Practical case studies</a> show the creative ways partnership values are being translated into practice. Here are five examples: </p>
<ol>
<li><p>Students observing and discussing classes with lecturers.</p></li>
<li><p>Students and staff working together to revise or co-create new subjects or classes.</p></li>
<li><p>Students and lecturers negotiating the syllabus at the start of the semester.</p></li>
<li><p>Students and staff collaborating to address complicated university issues together (such as cheating or sexual harassment). </p></li>
<li><p>Students and staff co-designing new programs to make university more inclusive for non-traditional and under-represented students (such as first-in-family or Indigenous students).</p></li>
</ol>
<p>The focus on partnership signals the importance of dialogue between students and university staff in learning and teaching.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Gwry1O55CIM?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Jarred Turner and Kelly Matthews talking about students as partners in an interview with Peter Copeman at the University of Canberra.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The possibilities for partnership extend beyond universities and national borders. There is a new, open access international <a href="https://mulpress.mcmaster.ca/ijsap/index">academic journal</a> capturing research on students as partners, co-edited by students and lecturers. There is an annual <a href="https://macblog.mcmaster.ca/summer-institute/">International Students as Partners Institute</a> attended by students and staff. It is co-facilitated by students and lecturers. </p>
<p>We are beginning to see practices <a href="https://repository.brynmawr.edu/tlthe/vol1/iss21/">emerge across Australian universities</a> enabled by this new language of students as partners – changing the conversation and hopefully university cultures.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/universities-run-as-businesses-cant-pursue-genuine-learning-43402">Universities run as businesses can't pursue genuine learning</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Join the conversation</h2>
<p>A growing body of research demonstrates <a href="http://itali.uq.edu.au/content/about-students-partners">numerous benefits</a> when students and staff work together as partners. There is room for more voices in the <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/studentsaspartners?src=hash">#studentsaspartners</a> conversation. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/210909/original/file-20180318-104694-99euk1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/210909/original/file-20180318-104694-99euk1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=370&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/210909/original/file-20180318-104694-99euk1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=370&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/210909/original/file-20180318-104694-99euk1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=370&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/210909/original/file-20180318-104694-99euk1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=465&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/210909/original/file-20180318-104694-99euk1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=465&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/210909/original/file-20180318-104694-99euk1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=465&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">More Australian universities are embracing students as partners in learning and teaching, and supporting students in these new roles where they work alongside lecturers and staff to shape higher education.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Author provided/public domain</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>We need more examples of how students and staff are working differently, as partners, in universities. Share your examples, experiences, and ideas below so we can keep this conversation going.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/93276/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kelly E Matthews receives funding from the Office for Learning and Teaching. </span></em></p>When higher education is thought of as a commodity, students and teachers lose out. A new partnership-based approach can provide a much richer learning experience.Kelly E Matthews, Associate Professor and Australian Learning & Teaching Fellow, The University of QueenslandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/799362017-06-23T16:09:35Z2017-06-23T16:09:35ZUniversity rankings: good intentions, image polishing and more bureaucracy<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/175350/original/file-20170623-30721-gmg2jw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=41%2C41%2C5517%2C3586&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/group-students-sharing-ideas-on-campus-526892083?src=jDvKci_w2oMxZaDlAZ87Cw-1-0">PORTRAIT IMAGES ASIA BY NONWARIT/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Some UK universities will be cheering, some groaning, after the release of rankings under <a href="https://theconversation.com/tef-everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-new-university-rankings-79932?sr=1">the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF)</a>. My own university received a silver, so we’re shrugging. Despite all these reactions, we don’t know if we can expect any impact on the <a href="http://ejournals.bc.edu/ojs/index.php/ihe/article/download/9833/8615">quality of teaching</a>. What we do know, however, is that it will lead to a large-scale image polishing, the mushrooming of rankings-related bureaucracy, judicious gaming of the new rules, and cynicism amongst professors and lecturers. </p>
<p>When the universities minister, Jo Johnson, announced the <a href="https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/he-white-paper-tef-link-fees-stays-will-be-phased">TEF</a>, he had good intentions. He hoped to address the widely recognised problem that academics were rewarded for obscure research read by a handful of people. Teaching commitments were being neglected and Johnson worried this meant that students suffered. </p>
<p>Now, those students can see if their £9,000-a-year tuition fees are spent on gold, silver or bronze-rated universities. The government hopes this will create transparency and allow for more informed choices. Johnson also hoped that the rankings would also drive up teaching quality across the sector. I have spent much of my academic career studying how knowledge-intensive organisations, including universities, build reputations and respond to new challenges. I fear that Johnson may be disappointed.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/175351/original/file-20170623-27880-jz8833.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/175351/original/file-20170623-27880-jz8833.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/175351/original/file-20170623-27880-jz8833.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/175351/original/file-20170623-27880-jz8833.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/175351/original/file-20170623-27880-jz8833.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/175351/original/file-20170623-27880-jz8833.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/175351/original/file-20170623-27880-jz8833.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/175351/original/file-20170623-27880-jz8833.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">How will Jo Johnson define success?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/biggin-hillukseptember-182016jo-johnson-mp-attends-492946312?src=jSQl2puDdnZB6zr5AbGY2Q-1-1">Keith Larby/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Quibbles</h2>
<p>Of course this isn’t the first rankings system. In 1910, James McKeen Cattell’s directory, <a href="https://archive.org/details/americanmenofsci01catt">American Men of Science</a>, ranked US institutions on the basis of the concentration of distinguished people. In 1983, the <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2016/09/13/princeton-tops-list-2017-best-college-ranking/90261588/">US News and World Report Best College Ranking</a> attempted a comprehensive national ranking. Since 2003, there has been a flowering of <a href="http://arrow.dit.ie/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1046&context=cserart">global ranking systems</a>, including the Academic Ranking of World Universities, the THE-Thomson Reuters World University Ranking and QS World University Rankings. </p>
<p>There have always been quibbles over whether these are meaningful indicators of university quality. How reliable are they? Are the right questions being asked? How do they deal with missing information? How are different indicators weighted? How much should small differences affect relative ranking? The TEF now faces the same questions.</p>
<p>In truth though, rankings are more about perception than performance: more about PR than getting accurate information about how a university operates. The results will <a href="https://www.oecd.org/edu/imhe/39802910.pdf">make it on to promotional material</a> one way or another – however the rankings come out. When the results of the most recent Research Excellence Framework was announced, I read an email from one disappointed dean who nevertheless saw cause to celebrate his achievement – of ensuring the school was ranked at the top of the list in the West Midlands. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/175352/original/file-20170623-27888-1x5l2u4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/175352/original/file-20170623-27888-1x5l2u4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/175352/original/file-20170623-27888-1x5l2u4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/175352/original/file-20170623-27888-1x5l2u4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/175352/original/file-20170623-27888-1x5l2u4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/175352/original/file-20170623-27888-1x5l2u4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/175352/original/file-20170623-27888-1x5l2u4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/175352/original/file-20170623-27888-1x5l2u4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Pulling in the punters.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/college-move-day-new-students-dorm-174731720?src=VUddyGkAcEqy9TCNYEMYmw-1-0">Sean Locke Photography</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>These image-polishing activities are not in vain. <a href="https://www.oecd.org/edu/imhe/39802910.pdf">An OECD study</a> found that students do indeed use rankings as a way to filter information about institutions. One US study found that <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1023%2FB%3ARIHE.0000032324.46716.f4?LI=true">rankings had a genuine effect</a> on the number of student applications.</p>
<h2>Impact assessment</h2>
<p>Aside from PR puffery, do rankings actually affect how universities operate? Well, yes. But that may not be a good thing. Generally speaking, as soon as you create a ranking system, you also create a whole system for gaming the rankings. </p>
<p>In some cases, this has involved outright lying as <a href="http://jsinclaironline.com/Admissions%20game.pdf">institutions have fabricated</a> statistics about various things including graduation rates, staff-student ratios and test scores. This is relatively rare. What is more common is known in US law schools as “<a href="https://litigation-essentials.lexisnexis.com/webcd/app?action=DocumentDisplay&crawlid=1&doctype=cite&docid=45+Conn.+L.+Rev.+1235&srctype=smi&srcid=3B15&key=dc571cea7e6395ce4df609121e013558">jukin’ the stats</a>” – manipulating the results to get a favourable ranking.</p>
<p>Common tricks include <a href="https://www.stmarys-ca.edu/sites/default/files/attachments/files/rankings-and-reactivity-2007.pdf">bringing in students</a> who you know will perform well, will feel satisfied and go on to earn high salaries. This of course might boost your scores, but it can mean many “non-traditional” students face discrimination. </p>
<p>One effect of the gaming of the system is that universities <a href="https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/50b3/d4c2dd8ca362740e35b398a50303d9e302c0.pdf">become increasingly standardised</a>. To fit in with rankings, universities can spend big on building up attributes and offerings which they hope will push them up the table. </p>
<p>We can see this effect from the creation of global systems such as the <a href="http://www.shanghairanking.com/">Shanghai rankings</a> have encouraged universities across the world to model themselves on large US science-intensive universities. The Finnish government ploughed tens of millions into merging three institutions in Helsinki to create a “<a href="http://www.emeraldinsight.com/doi/pdfplus/10.1108/17422041111103813">Nordic MIT</a>”, an exercise in reputation-building with the aim of <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-34902884">improving its standing in the rankings</a>. Of course, this may turn out to be a wonderful investment for the university and students alike, but you have to wonder about the fragile motivation behind it.</p>
<p>In other cases, it has led to universities putting on the appearance that they have changed. The French government recently formed a single research-intensive university in Paris by pushing together <a href="https://www.univ-psl.fr/fr">individual institutions in the region</a>. This changed little about how the institution operated. But it did create a new brand which could climb up the global rankings.</p>
<h2>Rankings rituals</h2>
<p>Rankings have also created vast bureaucracies. Many universities have whole offices entirely devoted to processing and dealing with the wide range of accreditation and ranking exercises in which they participate. Rankings often require academics and administrators to engage in shallow bureaucratic rituals. As a result, faculty time is taken up with tasks that do nothing to increase the quality of teaching or research, but simply grease the wheels of the rankings process. Academics might find themselves inputting data on fleeting interaction with students, laboriously documenting the most minor “teaching innovations” or attending poor-quality teacher training courses. </p>
<p>That’s where the cynicism sets in. In research on business schools, we found that academics would <a href="https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/60766535/Alvesson%20and%20Spicer%2016.pdf">often be deeply cynical</a> about their role in producing the rankings, but would participate in the process anyway. Many talked about it as “playing the game”, helping to pull in the punters by whatever means necessary. </p>
<p>It is a possibility that the TEF will drive up teaching quality in UK universities, but the certainties are less benign. And it must be a concern that the troubling baggage of rankings systems – the gaming, the bureaucracy, the cynicism – will end up undermining that primary goal.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/79936/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Andre Spicer does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Students can now see if their £9,000 a year fees are going to a ‘gold-standard’ school. But how cynical should they be?Andre Spicer, Professor of Organisational Behaviour, Cass Business School, City, University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/781522017-05-25T03:34:30Z2017-05-25T03:34:30ZAmerica’s worsening global reputation could put billions in US exports at risk<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/170884/original/file-20170524-31366-1lxvg6w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Surveys suggest Trump's election is hurting America's reputation. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Kamil Zihnioglu</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>U.S. News and World Report recently published its annual “<a href="https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/articles/methodology">Best Countries</a>” ranking, based on how thousands of people around the world perceive other nations. Switzerland topped the 80-country ranking, followed by Canada and the United Kingdom. </p>
<p>One big surprise was that the United States fell three spots, from fourth to seventh. The U.S. received poor marks for business friendliness, respect for human rights and democracy, and educational quality. These results align with <a href="http://www.forbes.com/best-countries-for-business/list/">another ranking from Forbes</a> showing the U.S. in decline.</p>
<p>Reputational rankings and similar “best of” lists surely make for interesting dinner conversation, but they do beg an important question: Does a country’s reputation really matter?</p>
<p>The three of us, an economist and two marketers, decided to examine how a change in a country’s reputation might affect its trade relationships. The results were astounding. </p>
<p></p><hr><p></p>
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<h2>How a country earns its rep</h2>
<p>A country’s reputation is, in essence, the perceptions that people elsewhere hold about its standing in the world.</p>
<p>There is no uniformly correct way to measure reputation. The U.S. News survey asks respondents to rate countries on categories from “adventure” and “power” to “quality of life” and “citizenship,” while Forbes focuses on business. And a country’s reputation can vary in different parts of the world. </p>
<p>People form those opinions based on the totality of their experiences involving the country, from the products they’ve bought to the people they’ve met while traveling to the images they’ve seen in movies. </p>
<p>Another major factor in a country’s reputation is politics and diplomacy. And in that department, the election of Donald Trump may be contributing to the problem. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.pewglobal.org/2016/06/29/as-obama-years-draw-to-close-president-and-u-s-seen-favorably-in-europe-and-asia/">Pew surveyed</a> citizens of 10 European Union countries last year and found that 85 percent of respondents had no confidence that Trump would do the “right thing” in world affairs. And since the election, 75 percent of those surveyed around the world for the Best Countries ranking – which came out in April – said they <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/07/world/best-countries-world-switzerland-canada-britain-germany.html?_r=0">had lost some degree of respect for the U.S.</a> </p>
<p>As a result, experts predict the U.S. will receive 4.3 million fewer visitors in this year than in 2016, in part because changes to immigration policy are <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2017/03/29/trumps-travel-ban-could-cost-18b-us-tourism-travel-analysts-say/99708758/">making tourists feel unwelcome</a>.</p>
<p>Of additional concern is that relations between the U.S. and some key trading partners have taken a turn for the worse. For example, the U.S. <a href="http://money.cnn.com/interactive/news/economy/how-us-trade-stacks-up/?iid=EL">exports more to Mexico</a> than any other country but Canada. Yet the president’s insistence on a proposed border wall has probably harmed the United States’ reputation among Mexican citizens and businesspeople.</p>
<h2>Opening a window</h2>
<p>Our <a href="http://www.emeraldinsight.com/doi/full/10.1108/IMR-10-2015-0211">recently published</a> research (sponsored in part by the <a href="http://www.sbs.ox.ac.uk/faculty-research/reputation">Oxford University Centre for Corporate Reputation</a>) provides a window into how intangible perceptions such as reputation can produce very tangible consequences. </p>
<p>Our measure of country reputation was the <a href="http://nation-brands.gfk.com/">Anholt-GfK Nation Brands Index</a>, which is based on a global survey of more than 20,000 respondents across 20 countries. We used the results from 2008, the last year for which data are publicly available. Respondents in those countries rated the country reputation of the other 19 countries as well as 30 additional countries around the globe, creating a matrix of country-pairs (Canada’s reputation among Germans, Germany’s reputation among Brazilians, etc.). </p>
<p>To measure various dimensions of country reputation, the surveys included ratings both for the quality of a country’s products and the trustworthiness of its people. </p>
<p>To capture export volume, we pulled data from the <a href="https://comtrade.un.org">United Nations Statistical Division Commodity Trade Statistics Database</a> for each country-pair. We wanted to make sure we were seeing only the potential impact of country reputation on exports (and not the other way around) so we downloaded trade data for 2010, two years after the reputation data were collected. </p>
<p>Combining the export figures with the reputation data resulted in a unique dataset of 861 country-pairs (e.g., Italy’s reputation among the French and Italian exports to France two years later). </p>
<p>We then applied what has been described as “one of the most successful empirical models in economics” (economists call it the <a href="http://annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev-economics-111809-125114">structural gravity model</a> of international trade) to test whether this relationship panned out on a global scale. Essentially, the model enables us to test the effect of reputation on exports for each specific trade relationship. </p>
<p>To exclude alternative explanations, we also accounted for a host of other factors that are known to influence trade between countries, such as the size of each market, geographic distance and having a common official language.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/170886/original/file-20170524-31362-10s960f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/170886/original/file-20170524-31362-10s960f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170886/original/file-20170524-31362-10s960f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170886/original/file-20170524-31362-10s960f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170886/original/file-20170524-31362-10s960f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170886/original/file-20170524-31362-10s960f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170886/original/file-20170524-31362-10s960f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A drop in a nation’s reputational ranking with a trading partner can lead to a sharp slide in exports with that country.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>How reputation affects trade</h2>
<p>We were amazed at what we found. </p>
<p>Each ranking drop in a country’s reputation is associated with a decrease in export volume of 2 percent. As an illustrative example, if the U.S. were to drop one reputational rung among Canadians, we would expect – all other things equal – a corresponding 2 percent decrease in exports to Canada. If we apply the results to 2016 exports, that would mean a potential loss of <a href="https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/c1220.html">more than US$5 billion</a>.</p>
<p>From another perspective, the effect is roughly equivalent to an importing country raising tariffs by 3 percent. For a large exporter like the United States (about <a href="https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/statistics/highlights/annual.html">$1.5 trillion</a> in exported goods per year), a uniform drop in reputation could put tens of billions in manufacturing exports in jeopardy. </p>
<p>Of course, the relationship works both ways. If reputation improves, our model predicts the same corresponding increase in export volume. </p>
<h2>Ignore at your peril</h2>
<p>The Trump administration has made stimulating exports a priority and <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/trade-deals-working-all-americans">argues</a> that “international trade can be used to grow our economy, return millions of jobs to America’s shores and revitalize our nation’s suffering communities.” </p>
<p>Yet, in his efforts to do this, he appears to be ignoring a meaningful ingredient: reputation.</p>
<p>Our research makes one thing clear: Countries ignore their international reputations at their peril. If Trump is serious about increasing exports, a good place to start would be improving America’s – and his – standing in the world.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/78152/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Daniel Korschun received funding from the Oxford Centre for Corporate Reputation for this research. He occasionally consults for companies on their corporate reputation practices. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Boryana Dimitrova received funding from the Oxford Centre for Corporate Reputation for this research.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Yotov received funding for this research from the Oxford Centre for Corporate Reputation and from the LeBow
Center for Corporate Reputation Management. Yotov occasionally consults for governments and international organizations. </span></em></p>Surveys show Trump’s election is damaging America’s reputation abroad, which research suggests could deal a sharp blow to US trade.Daniel Korschun, Associate Professor of Marketing, Drexel UniversityBoryana V Dimitrova, Clinical Professor of Marketing, Drexel UniversityYoto V. Yotov, Associate Professor of Economics, Drexel UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/712352017-01-23T12:11:14Z2017-01-23T12:11:14ZWhy new school performance tables tell us very little about school performance<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/153838/original/image-20170123-8082-1irodf7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The latest performance tables for secondary and primary schools in England have been released – with parents and educators alike looking to the tables to understand <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/2017/01/19/gcse-school-league-tables-2016-compare-schools-performance/">and compare</a> schools in their area. </p>
<p>Schools will also be keen to see if they have met a new set of national standards set by the government. These new standards now include “<a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/583857/Progress_8_school_performance_measure_Jan_17.pdf">progress</a>” measures, which are a type of “value-added measure”. These compare pupils’ results with other pupils who got the same exam scores as them at the end of primary school.</p>
<p>Previously, secondary schools were rated mainly by raw GCSE results. This was based on the number of pupils getting five A to C GCSEs. But because GCSE results are strongly linked to how well pupils perform in primary school, it tended to be that these previous performance tables told us more about school intakes than actual performance. So under the new measures, schools are judged by how much progress students make compared to other pupils of a similar ability.</p>
<p>This means that it is now easier to identify schools that have good results despite low starting points. As well as schools with very able students who are making relatively little progress compared to able pupils at other schools.</p>
<p>But even with these fairer headline measures, the tables still tell us relatively little about school performance. This is because there are serious problems with the use of these types of “value-added measures” to judge school performance – as <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/berj.3247/abstract">my new research</a> shows. I have outlined the main issues below:</p>
<h2>Intake biases</h2>
<p>Taking pupils’ starting points into account when judging school performance is a step in the right direction, because this means that schools are held accountable for the progress pupils make while at the school. It also focuses schools’ efforts on all pupils making progress rather than just those on the <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13634230500340898?src=recsys">C/D grade borderline</a> which was so crucial for success in the previous measure. </p>
<p>But school intakes differ by more than their prior exam results. My study finds that over a third of the variation in the new secondary school scores can be accounted for by a small number of factors such as the number of disadvantaged pupils at a school, or pupils at the school for whom English is not their first language. This means the new measure is still some way off “levelling the playing field” when comparing school performance.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/153840/original/image-20170123-8062-xskv5d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/153840/original/image-20170123-8062-xskv5d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/153840/original/image-20170123-8062-xskv5d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/153840/original/image-20170123-8062-xskv5d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/153840/original/image-20170123-8062-xskv5d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/153840/original/image-20170123-8062-xskv5d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/153840/original/image-20170123-8062-xskv5d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">New measures don’t level the playing field.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In my research, I examined how much school scores would change if these differences in context were taken into account. While schools with a “typical” intake of pupils may be largely unaffected, schools working in the most or least challenging areas could see their scores shifting dramatically. I found this could be by as much as an average of five GCSE grades per pupil across their best eight subjects. And these are just the “biases” we know about and have measures for.</p>
<h2>Unstable over time</h2>
<p>My research also replicated <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-985X.2009.00597.x/abstract">previous research</a> which found that secondary school performance is only moderately “stable” over time when looking at relative progress. This can be seen in the fact that less than a quarter of the variation in school scores can be accounted for by school performance three years earlier. I also extended this to primary school level where I found stability to be lower still.</p>
<p>The recent “value-added” progress measures are slightly more stable than the former “contextualised” measure – which took many pupil characteristics as well as previous exam results into account. But given “biases” relating to intakes, such as strong links with pupil disadvantage, higher stability is probably not a good thing and most likely reflects differences in school intakes. The real test is whether the measure is stable when these “predictable biases” are removed.</p>
<h2>Poorly reflect range of pupils</h2>
<p>League tables by their very nature give the scores for a single group in a single year. This means the performance of the year group that left the school last year (as given in the performance tables) reveals very little about the performance of other year groups – and my research supports this. I looked at pupils in years three to nine – ages seven to 14 – to examine the performance of different year groups in the same school at a given point in time.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/153841/original/image-20170123-8078-hipzuh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/153841/original/image-20170123-8078-hipzuh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/153841/original/image-20170123-8078-hipzuh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/153841/original/image-20170123-8078-hipzuh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/153841/original/image-20170123-8078-hipzuh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/153841/original/image-20170123-8078-hipzuh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/153841/original/image-20170123-8078-hipzuh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Even very high or low performing schools tend to have a huge range of pupil scores.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>I found that even the performance of consecutive year groups – so years six and five – were only moderately similar. For cohorts separated by two or more years, levels of similarity were also found to be low. This inconsistency can also be seen within a single year – where even very high or low performing schools tend to have a <a href="http://etheses.bham.ac.uk/6773/1/Perry16PhD.pdf">huge range of pupil scores</a>.</p>
<p>This all goes to show that school performance tables are not a true or fair reflection of a school’s performance. While there is certainly room to improve this situation, <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/berj.3247/abstract">my research</a> suggests that relative progress measures will never be a fair and accurate guide to school performance on their own.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/71235/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>This research was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)</span></em></p>Three reasons why the new progress measures may be a misleading indicator of school performance.Tom Perry, Visiting Lecturer, University of BirminghamLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/659612016-09-26T13:22:33Z2016-09-26T13:22:33ZUnder-funding, not protests, is driving South African universities down global rankings<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/139151/original/image-20160926-2470-1ic1zw6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Ongoing student protests are unlikely to have been a direct cause of universities’ slide down global rankings tables.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Mike Hutchings </span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The most widely respected world university rankings have all recently published their latest results. The release of the <a href="https://www.timeshighereducation.com/world-university-rankings">Times Higher Education</a> 2016-17 and <a href="http://www.topuniversities.com/student-info/university-news/qs-world-university-rankings-20162017-global-press-release">Quacquarelli Symonds 2016-17</a> rankings have coincided with a resurgence in <a href="http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/varsities-to-stay-shut-amid-uncertainty-over-protests-20160925">protests</a> at many of South Africa’s universities.</p>
<p>Most of South Africa’s universities have dropped down these ranking tables.</p>
<p>Some people <a href="http://www.timeslive.co.za/local/2016/09/23/Did-student-activist-Qwabe-influence-world-university-rankings">argue</a> that the protests – which relate to fees, access and transformation and have occurred on and off for the past 18 months – are having a direct effect on universities’ global standing on rankings tables.</p>
<p>But it’s unlikely that the protests themselves are directly affecting rankings. Instead, decades of government under-funding in the higher education sector may be at least partly to blame.</p>
<p>The University of Cape Town (UCT), where I am a deputy vice-chancellor, has handed <a href="http://www.uct.ac.za/dailynews/?id=9955">a memorandum</a> to the Department of Higher Education and Training. It states:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We believe that government has not acted decisively to ensure sustainable and adequate funding to address the systemic crisis in the higher education sector. Government has placed an undue burden on students, parents and universities to fund higher education.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This may seem unfair: the government has dramatically increased the amount of money it gives to universities. But so have students. And educational inflation has played a part too. In real terms, the amount universities receive in state subsidy as a proportion of their total income has <a href="http://businesstech.co.za/news/general/102010/what-you-need-to-know-about-university-fees-in-south-africa/">declined from 49% in 2000 to 40% in 2012</a>. </p>
<p>Funding has a direct effect on many of the indicators that are used to measure performance in world university rankings. With less funding, staff-student ratios rise. Top staff, who produce the most papers, leave for more lucrative salaries abroad. Universities can’t afford to send their academics to many conferences, so fewer conference papers are produced.</p>
<h2>How rankings are calculated</h2>
<p>UCT has, for some time, been able to compensate for the drop in government funding for research. We’ve done this, for instance, by working hard to increase external income – particularly research grants and donations. This has been remarkably successful.</p>
<p>But not all South African universities are in a position to do this. And a point will be reached where external income, for which there is increasingly tough competition, is not enough. UCT may have reached that point. Some other universities will have reached it long ago.</p>
<p>Universities don’t yet need to despair. First of all, a drop in rankings does not mean a drop in actual performance. On most of the indicators, in most of the rankings, UCT continues to improve as it has done for many years. A number of our sister universities are, likewise, improving across several indicators: producing more papers, bringing in more income, increasing their proportion of postgraduate students – all important indicators of research performance. </p>
<p>But it is perfectly possible for an institution to improve its scores and still see a significant drop in the rankings. This is because scores are ranked and so performance is relative. If other institutions have improved their scores even more than yours, they will climb above your institution in the rankings.</p>
<p>This is important. It’s exactly what is happening to South African universities. Institutions from elsewhere in the world are improving much more significantly. And it is no coincidence that the countries which are seeing a rapid rise in the rankings are mostly those that have chosen to invest heavily in their universities.</p>
<p>The most startling example is China, whose various projects to produce top-ranked universities, such as the <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/jnylander/2015/09/14/chinas-investment-in-elite-universities-pays-off-new-ranking/#76afb5f875f2">C9 initiative</a>, are paying off spectacularly. Another well-performing BRICS competitor, India, spends 1.23% of its gross domestic produce (GDP) on tertiary education. This is compared to South Africa’s weak <a href="http://www.unisa.ac.za/contents/projects/docs/National%20Plan%20Higher%20Education.pdf">0.74%</a>.</p>
<p>After the release of its latest rankings Quacquarelli Symonds <a href="http://www.topuniversities.com/student-info/university-news/qs-world-university-rankings-20162017-global-press-release">argued</a> that levels of investment determine which institutions progress and which regress. Top American universities, which have significant endowments to rely on, and Asian universities, which have benefited from significant public funding, are rising. Many Western European universities, on the other hand, have seen cuts to public funding for research and are losing ground.</p>
<h2>Reputation matters</h2>
<p>There is one way in which the student protests themselves, rather than the under-funding that caused them, may directly affect some of the indicators by which universities are measured. </p>
<p>Each ranking uses different indicators to measure a university’s performance. But on the whole they are a combination of hard data, such as citations – the number of times an author has been cited, or referred to – and ratio of staff to students. There are also more qualitative “reputation” indicators. These are achieved by asking academics and employers to list the top institutions in their fields.</p>
<p>It is these “reputation” indicators that <em>could</em> be directly affected by the protests. Although they are intended to be objective, it does not require a great stretch of the imagination to believe that some academics who see South African institutions in constant crisis, with lectures cancelled, exams postponed and buildings burned, are affected at least subconsciously. </p>
<p>South African institutions were particularly hard hit in the reputation indicator in THE’s latest rankings. However, some universities that were affected by the protests bucked the trend: the University of the Witwatersrand rose in the THE rankings. So there is no clear evidence of a causal relationship between the protests and the universities’ performance in the rankings.</p>
<h2>But does it matter?</h2>
<p>In assessing the extent to which #feesmustfall protests might have affected South African universities’ rankings, I have left aside the much larger and more important question of whether it matters. </p>
<p>Universities certainly regard rankings with a measure of caution. Rankings are very imperfect measurements of excellence. They take no account of the contexts in which universities find themselves, particularly those based in developing or emerging economies. They do not measure some of the functions of a university that the sector would regard as critical: for instance, whether the research a university undertakes makes a difference, or whether the graduates it produces are thoughtful and productive citizens.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, the drop in rankings has been greeted with <a href="http://businesstech.co.za/news/lifestyle/137695/what-the-rest-of-the-world-thinks-about-south-africas-universities/">consternation</a> in the media. The coincidence with the university protests could lead to a damaging narrative that the country’s universities are inevitably “going to the dogs”. </p>
<p>I can categorically state that UCT is nowhere near that kind of precipitous decline. However, if under-funding from government continues and the issue of fees is not resolved, I am less confident of our and our sister universities’ future.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/65961/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Danie Visser does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>It’s unlikely that student protests are directly affecting South African universities’ rankings. Instead, decades of government underfunding in higher education may be at least partly to blame.Danie Visser, Deputy Vice Chancellor, University of Cape TownLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/638602016-08-12T08:12:53Z2016-08-12T08:12:53ZSouth Africa is Africa’s largest economy (again). But what does it mean?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/133911/original/image-20160812-16360-1kaq7mv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>South Africa has toppled Nigeria and reclaimed its status as <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-37045276">the largest economy in Africa</a>. This comes two years after Nigeria rebased its GDP calculation and advanced to the top spot. South Africa was also temporarily relegated to the third position early this year after <a href="http://www.moneyweb.co.za/news/economy/imf-egypt-overtakes-sa-africas-second-largest-economy/">Egypt climbed to claim the second spot</a>. The Conversation Africa’s business and economy editor Sibonelo Radebe asked the University of the Witwatersrand’s Professor Jannie Rossouw to explain what it all means.</em></p>
<p><strong>How is this ranking calculated?</strong></p>
<p>The ranking is made on the basis of the size of the gross domestic product (GDP) of the three countries in question, namely South Africa, Egypt and Nigeria. The GDP is a measure of total economic activity in a country in a specific period (for example a year). GDP is measured in the domestic currency of the country, which is the rand in the case of South Africa, the naira in Nigeria and the Egyptian pound in Egypt’s case.</p>
<p>For purposes of international comparison, the GDP values are converted at the prevailing exchange rate to a common international currency such as the US dollar. Owing to the increase in the exchange rate value of <a href="http://www.bdlive.co.za/economy/2016/07/01/we-will-watch-rands-rally-for-signs-of-a-longer-term-trend-daniel-mminele-says">the rand</a>, the US dollar value of the South African GDP increased. Given the change in the value of the country’s currency, its GDP exceeded the value of Nigeria’s GDP. The same applies to Egypt: owing to the increase in the exchange rate of the rand, South Africa’s GDP is now larger than the GDP of Egypt when converted to US dollars.</p>
<p>It’s important to remember that South Africa’s <em>actual</em> GDP in rand value stayed the same.</p>
<p>However, the difference between South Africa and Nigeria is not large. At the time the <a href="http://www.bdlive.co.za/economy/2016/08/10/africas-largest-economy-in-dollar-terms-is-sa-following-the-rands-improvement">calculation</a> was made, the US dollar value of the South African GDP was some $301bn, while Nigeria’s was $296bn. At current exchange rates the Egyptian GDP is about US$270 bn.</p>
<p>One must caution that the relative ranking could have changed since the calculation, depending on exchange rate movements.</p>
<p><strong>What do these ranking mean? Are they useful in any way?</strong></p>
<p>These rankings do not mean much and are not really useful to the people making economic policy and investment decisions. What really matters to economic actors, broader stakeholders and observers are the economic prospects of these countries. What people want to know is: will there be economic growth in years to come, and will the GDP per capita increase?</p>
<p>GDP per capita is measured as the income per person (on average) in a country and provides an indication of standard of living. On this basis a country with a small GDP, but also a small population, can have a better standard of living than a large country. In Africa, Botswana comes to mind.</p>
<p>GDP growth is important because it provides returns for investors in an economy. It also provides an increase in job opportunities for unemployed people and new entrants to the labour market. In the long run GDP growth contributes to increased GDP per capita and increased standards of living in a country.</p>
<p>International investors pay less attention to relative size of economies than they do to growth prospects. These are much more important when making investment decisions.</p>
<p>Currently the economic prospects of South Africa, Nigeria and Egypt are poor. South Africa has not fully recovered from the aftershocks of the financial crisis of 2008. No economic growth is expected for 2016, while economic growth at a rate lower than the population growth rate is expected for 2017 and 2018. On a per capita basis South Africa will <a href="http://www.resbank.co.za/Lists/News%20and%20Publications/Attachments/7396/MPC%20Statement%20July%202016.pdf">get poorer over the next two years</a>.</p>
<p>The economic prospects for the Nigerian economy will remain poor as long as the oil price remains under pressure, owing to Nigiria’s over-dependence on oil. The Egyptian economy is hampered by a large government budget deficit.</p>
<p><strong>The last time Nigeria overtook South Africa Lagos rebased the way it calculates its GDP. What’s different between then and now?</strong></p>
<p>Naturally not only exchange rates play a role, but also the size of the GDP of a country calculated in terms of its own currency. The size of the domestic GDP in local currency value can increase as a result of economic growth (and also decrease with negative economic growth).</p>
<p>From time to time countries’ GDPs are also rebased to ensure that economic activity is accurately reflected. A recent rebasing of the Nigerian GDP contributed to that country claiming first place in terms of economic output in Africa.</p>
<p>Rebasing is a fairly common practice in all countries. This can be done, for example, to take full account of new activities such as cell phones or renewable energy investments. But rebasing is done on a scientific basis and countries cannot simply rebase their GDPs in a quest to increase the relative size of their economy. There must be scientific grounds for rebasing.</p>
<p><strong>How should we measure or rank economies? Are there alternative reliable tools that can be used?</strong></p>
<p>The alternative way to rank economies is the use of purchasing power parity (PPP) exchange rates. On this basis rapid and immediate swings in exchange rates are not taken into consideration in the measurement of relative economic size. PPP is calculated on the basis of the goods/services a unit of currency can buy in different countries, to reflect “affordability”, rather than only price. </p>
<p>A common example is a comparison of the price of hamburgers in two different countries. The prices of <a href="http://www.economist.com/content/big-mac-index">McDonalds hamburgers are compared</a> in different countries and a PPP exchange rate is calculated to show whether exchange rates (on this basis) are over- or undervalued.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/63860/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jannie Rossouw is received financial assistance for research from the NRF and from ERSA. </span></em></p>South Africa has claimed back its status of the largest economy in Africa, toppling Nigeria, due to the appreciation of the rand. What’s prompted the movement?Jannie Rossouw, Head of School of Economic & Business Sciences, University of the WitwatersrandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/627092016-07-24T20:02:23Z2016-07-24T20:02:23ZRanking African universities: hypocrisy, impunity and complicity<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/131256/original/image-20160720-31146-1w00d5m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Ranking organisations call the shots about which universities are ‘best’.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Nearly ten years ago I confronted an expert about what she claimed was an “African phenomenon” in higher education. She was reluctant to provide me with the raw data upon which this “phenomenon” was premised, so I vigorously contested her claim.</p>
<p>Later I managed to access that data through a credible international organisation. The conclusion she’d reached about Africa was based on feedback from just one country, Algeria. </p>
<p>I am sharing this story because so much of the talk about ranking higher education institutions in Africa goes on without meaningful, let alone credible, data. Research <a href="http://www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=20111123211515245">has found</a> that some African universities can’t answer basic questions about their own operations because they lack data.</p>
<p>This data deficit isn’t limited to higher education; it’s a <a href="https://theconversation.com/studying-africa-by-numbers-can-be-misleading-what-can-be-done-about-it-62638">huge problem</a> across sectors in Africa.</p>
<p>Yet ranking bodies go on making statements about which universities are “best” or “most research intensive”. They seem to be unencumbered by a lack of data. These bodies also disregard universities in Africa’s many <a href="http://www.nationsonline.org/oneworld/countries_by_languages.htm#French">French-</a> and <a href="http://www.nationsonline.org/oneworld/countries_by_languages.htm#Portuguese">Portuguese-speaking</a> countries. Instead they focus on institutions that teach in English.</p>
<p>When Times Higher Education ventured into Africa in 2015, just months after the high-profile <a href="http://summit.trustafrica.org/">African Higher Education Summit</a> in Dakar, Senegal, it boasted that it was “moving Africa’s universities forward and building a shared global legacy”. Another ranking organisation, QS, has also started an African ranking system. Its <a href="http://www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=20160416154105336">stated mission</a> is to:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>build world-class universities for … African communities through global partnership and collaboration.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Certainly, the academic community must support as many meaningful summits, conferences and symposia as possible. These should be welcomed and encouraged. But it’s arrogant and hypocritical for ranking institutions to declare that they’re building Africa’s legacy or its global partnerships on the continent’s behalf. </p>
<h2>Impunity</h2>
<p>In March 2016 <em>New Vision</em>, a widely circulated East African newspaper, published an article headlined “<a href="http://www.newvision.co.ug/new_vision/news/1420701/makerere-world-development-studies">Makerere among world’s top 50 for development studies</a>”. The QS ranking agency placed Uganda’s Makerere University above some of the US’s “leading” universities like Johns Hopkins and Duke on its list of best places to pursue a development studies degree. I am as sentimental as anyone else in Uganda and on the continent more broadly about this “achievement”. If only it was credible: on QS’s overall list, Makerere occupied position 1,156! </p>
<p>A couple of years ago another ranker, <a href="http://www.webometrics.info/en">Webometrics</a>, put my own institution – South Africa’s University of Kwazulu-Natal – at the very top of its Africa list. A year later, the university didn’t even make the top five. But in that same period it appeared to actually scale up, not down, in the areas that Webometrics measured. </p>
<p>African institutions go up and down the scale without an iota of explanation. Universities that are known to be struggling and facing massive challenges have previously appeared high up on the Times Higher Education <a href="https://www.timeshighereducation.com/world-university-rankings/best-universities-in-africa-2016">list</a>. An institution that was described by one of its former CEOs as a “catastrophic failure” was among the list’s top performers.</p>
<p>South Africa has some dozen fine institutions. Accordingly, and as expected, these have <a href="https://www.timeshighereducation.com/world-university-rankings/best-universities-in-africa-2016">dominated</a> the African higher education ranking scale. But as I’ve <a href="http://reference.sabinet.co.za/webx/access/electronic_journals/high/high_v29_n5_a2.pdf">pointed out before</a>, the risk of rankings is that they dangerously conceal these South African universities’ serious shortcomings, particularly in graduate education.</p>
<p>These lists, then, seem to be designed with impunity by the rankers. </p>
<h2>Complicity</h2>
<p>These so called “legacy building efforts for Africa” are mounted in alliance with the continent’s universities. The African institutions that are partaking in this futile game obviously can’t be stopped from engaging in such exercises. But it’s lamentable that a couple of credible players are part of this folly: it comes with real consequences of unduly distracting, and even forcing, universities from their stated objectives and broader stakeholder expectations. </p>
<p>The institutions and high-profile personalities involved in the events orchestrated by ranking agencies need to be more cautious and more responsible in their engagements. And their declaration of building Africa’s legacy must be categorically rejected outright. </p>
<p>At <a href="http://lseafricasummit.com/">a summit</a> hosted by the London School of Economics in April 2016, a representative for Times Higher Education said the organisation would establish an advisory committee during its <a href="http://www.theworldsummitseries.com/events/africa-universities-summit/event-summary-a54af174228b4be3b1f3940b326881eb.aspx">meeting</a> later that month in Ghana. </p>
<p>This committee’s role is supposedly to oversee Times Higher Education’s adventure in ranking African universities. Presumably, having African universities more actively involved may improve the process. But as long as ranking organisations call the shots and act with impunity, even these sorts of cosmetic interventions may not help.</p>
<h2>African universities must be more vocal</h2>
<p>It may be true that higher education rankings are here to stay. It is conceivable that they may even flourish as interest in – and the implications of – rankings grow. </p>
<p>With this growth there may well be a proliferation of higher education ranking bodies. I wish for a “thousand flowers to bloom” in the ranking business – only because, at the end, they may not mean much. Less cynically, the proliferation of these bodies may push most, if not all, to be more responsible, more accountable and more truly consultative.</p>
<p>For now, African higher education stakeholders must be vocal in rejecting flawed and <a href="https://theconversation.com/ranking-african-universities-is-a-futile-endeavour-46692">massively defective</a> ranking instruments that are absurdly sold as building the continent’s legacy. The ranking entities have set their sights on several objectives; advancing Africa’s legacy, whatever that may be, is not among them.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/62709/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Damtew Teferra does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>It is arrogant and hypocritical for ranking institutions to declare that they’re building Africa’s legacy or its global partnerships on the continent’s behalf.Damtew Teferra, Professor of Higher Education, University of KwaZulu-NatalLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/405292015-06-04T14:27:49Z2015-06-04T14:27:49ZConsumers love rankings, but they may end up doing more harm than good<p>This week, El Celler de Can Roca in Girona, Spain, became the world’s finest eatery – at least according to the <a href="http://www.theworlds50best.com/list/1-50-winners">2015 World’s 50 Best Restaurant</a> awards – thanks to the “curiosity and creativity” of the three brothers who own it. </p>
<p>Earning such a prestigious award is a sure way to guarantee El Celler and others on the list have packed dining rooms for many years, bestowing on them success and profits. When Noma became the “world’s best” for the first time in 2010, the designation “is <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/01/travel/worlds-50-best-restaurant-awards-2015/">credited</a> with catapulting the restaurant to international stardom, resulting in enough booking requests to fill its tables for years to come.”</p>
<p>Such rankings abound in today’s society, whether organized by a group like the World’s 50 Best or based on the preferences of consumers on Trip Advisor. Typically they’re considered useful and beneficial, providing incentives for restaurants and other businesses to improve their services and products while giving the rest of us more information to make decisions. </p>
<p>But can they do harm as well and actually make us all worse off than before? New <a href="http://www.nber.org/papers/w21083">research</a> we’ve conducted shows the answer may, surprisingly, be yes. In some cases, we might be better off without them. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/83856/original/image-20150603-2966-8g5ip6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/83856/original/image-20150603-2966-8g5ip6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=314&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83856/original/image-20150603-2966-8g5ip6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=314&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83856/original/image-20150603-2966-8g5ip6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=314&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83856/original/image-20150603-2966-8g5ip6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83856/original/image-20150603-2966-8g5ip6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83856/original/image-20150603-2966-8g5ip6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Do rankings have a dark side?</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Trophies via www.shutterstock.com</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Rankings, their critics and sour grapes</h2>
<p>Such rankings have long been the target of criticism, especially from those being ranked and when the designation is particularly influential, as is the case with the World’s 50 Best Restaurants. </p>
<p>An “Occupy50best” petition has been circulating recently, signed by more than 400 chefs, restaurateurs and others who have attacked the methodology underlying the World’s Best rankings. They <a href="http://occupy50best.com">claim</a> there are no established criteria and no consistent and objective gastronomical requirements, while jury members are “appointed by backroom politics, vote anonymously, without ever having to justify their choice of a restaurant or even to prove that they actually ate there!”</p>
<p>Such criticism of the methodology underlying rankings is probably as widespread as rankings themselves. One need to look no further than the never-ending <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/09/10/why-u-s-news-college-rankings-shouldnt-matter-to-anyone/">debate</a> about rankings of education programs and <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/news/why-us-news-college-rankings-hurt-students/">universities</a>.</p>
<p>The key question is usually about quality and whether the ranking accurately reflects it. And criticism may be just sour grapes among the unranked (or low-listed).</p>
<p>But even if the ranking method is good and correctly reflects quality, a more basic question ought to be asked: is it good for consumers? To put it another way: is better information (as provided by a correct ranking) good for consumers’ welfare? </p>
<h2>The interplay among consumer decisions</h2>
<p>If rankings were used only in situations where an individual decision affects only the decision-maker, more information would indeed always be better and never harm consumers. </p>
<p>However, in many markets where rankings play a role, consumers’ choices do not exist in a vacuum as purely individual decision problems; they affect others’ welfare and their decisions in often complex ways. </p>
<p>Consider restaurants. For many customers, the value of a dinner is influenced by the identity of the other patrons of the restaurant. Or education programs. Students learn from their peers, and the network generated at a school is crucial for future professional success. </p>
<p>In other words, these markets are characterized by “consumption externalities” – when consuming a product or service has a positive or negative affect on others. </p>
<p>Furthermore, in some markets, prices are rigid, leading to rationing so that not everyone who wants a product or service gets it. For instance, in many good restaurants, one has to book a table well in advance. </p>
<p>Last but not least, in markets with fully flexible prices and without externalities, firms’ price-setting behavior is influenced by demand, and hence again agents’ choices can’t be described as individual decision problems.</p>
<h2>Foodies and normal consumers</h2>
<p>In our recent research, we investigated the welfare effects of rankings in such markets where consumers’ choices are interdependent. We show that in such cases rankings may be harmful for consumers.</p>
<p>How could this be? To understand, let’s focus on markets with rationing (which fits quite well the case of restaurants, especially if one acknowledges that prices are the same every day of the week, but demand is much higher on the weekend). </p>
<p>Now, consider a hypothetical market with two restaurants and no rankings. One of the restaurants, let’s call it A, is more expensive and of higher (expected) quality, while the other, B, is less expensive and of lower (expected) quality. Because there is no ranking, there is uncertainty about which restaurant is indeed of higher quality. There are also two types of consumers: the foodies who value quality highly and the normal consumers who don’t.</p>
<p>Without the ranking, the expected quality difference between restaurants A and B is not sufficient for normal consumers to be willing to pay the extra cost of restaurant A. They therefore book a table at restaurant B. The foodies, on the other hand – because they are all about quality – are willing to pay the extra cost, and so they all book a table at restaurant A. </p>
<p>What happens when a (correct) ranking is published? That depends. Does it confirm that restaurant A is better? Or does it surprise consumers by ranking B higher?</p>
<h2>Rankings and welfare</h2>
<p>Let’s start with the case in which restaurant A ranks first. </p>
<p>Consumers now know with certainty that restaurant A is better than restaurant B. While this information doesn’t change what foodies would do (they are even more eager to check out the higher-priced joint), it does affect the choice of normal consumers. Indeed, being certain about the quality difference, normal consumers are willing to pay for the extra cost: they thus all call restaurant A to book a table.</p>
<p>The issue is that restaurant A is too small to accommodate both foodies and normal consumers. Therefore, it has to decline some consumers. The foodies that cannot get a table at restaurant A are made worse off by the publication of the ranking, whereas the normal consumers who do get a table are made better off.</p>
<p>Now, let’s consider the case in which the ranking outcome is a surprise: it reveals that restaurant B is better. In that case, the ranking affects the behavior of foodies who all want a table at restaurant B. The same capacity constraint problem arises and only some foodies are made better off by the publication of the ranking (whereas the normal consumers who cannot get a table anymore are made worse off).</p>
<h2>Consumers lose in the end</h2>
<p>What we show is that, once we take into account the probability of whether the ranking will confirm what we know or surprise us, and the rationing procedure used by restaurant (usually first-come first-serve), the welfare effect of the ranking might be negative for all consumers. A similar negative welfare effect is present in case of consumption externalities.</p>
<p>With flexible prices, neither rationing nor externalities are needed to reach the same conclusion. The reason is that the “winner” faces higher demand and can thus lift prices. If the level of demand depends a lot on quality (and hence on the ranking outcome), this rise in prices can be so large that every consumer loses in the end. </p>
<p>Far from suggesting that rankings are always harmful, our results propose a cautionary tale: contrary to the mantra, more information is not always better.</p>
<p>The question that remains is: when are rankings likely to be harmful? One of the conditions we identify is that consumers care sufficiently about quality. Ironically, it is when the information provided by the ranking is very important for consumers that it is most probable that it will hurt them.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/40529/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Laurent Bouton is a member of the American Economic Association, the Econometric Society, and the European Economic Association.
He has been selected to receive an European Reseach Council Starting Grant for his project "Political Economy with Many Parties".
</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Georg Kirchsteiger is also affiliated with Centre for Economic Policy Research, the Center for Economic Studies and Ifo Institute, and the Vienna Center for Experimental Economics.</span></em></p>Even when a hotel or restaurant ranking accurately reflects quality, consumers may be better off not knowing.Laurent Bouton, Assistant Professor of Economics, Georgetown UniversityGeorg Kirchsteiger, Professor of Microeconomics, Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB)Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/116772013-01-18T04:12:46Z2013-01-18T04:12:46ZStandards will slide while teacher education is used as a cash cow<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/19361/original/3v3v39t9-1358475928.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Teacher education is typically the largest undergraduate program in most universities and is therefore a cash cow.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Cash cow image courtesy of www.shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Despite all the talk about improving the quality of teachers and teaching in Australia, the <a href="http://www.bca.com.au/Content/101446.aspx">general downward</a> slide of entry standards to undergraduate teacher training courses continues.</p>
<p>While the top performing education nations such as Finland and South Korea draw their teachers from the the top quartile of school leavers (75th percentile or higher), some Australian universities have set their ATAR entry score for this year at <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/data-point/teacher-entry-ranking-tumbles-20130117-2cwb5.html">45 or even lower</a>. </p>
<p>Teacher education is typically the largest undergraduate professional program in most universities and is a significant source of income. Unfortunately, to fill the desired number of places, some universities resort to setting minimum entry scores that are far too low in order to meet student and financial targets. Additionally, when universities experience an overall shortfall in student applications, this “load” is often shifted to teacher education, further driving down entry scores.</p>
<p>This has a number of consequences. Students with higher scores who might otherwise be attracted to teaching feel they are “wasting” their marks if they take on teaching and are in kind deterred. More broadly, lower entry scores reinforce the perceived low status of teachers and teaching. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, those accepted with low scores will find completing their course challenging and teaching itself difficult. If they do manage to complete their course, they may well end up teaching students who are potential “90+” ATAR candidates, something which presents challenges for both teacher and student.</p>
<p>It needs to be recognised that, contrary to popular thinking, entry scores to undergraduate teacher training courses vary widely. While some universities go as low as the 40s, other require ATAR scores of more than 90. This discrepancy is widening, particularly with the entry of some TAFE colleges to teacher education, and cannot be allowed to continue if we are serious about improving the quality of teaching and learning in Australian schools.</p>
<p>It also needs to be recognised that the quality of teacher education courses is also variable. National accreditation of teacher education courses which is currently being introduced needs to address the issue of course quality and in particular the effectiveness of graduating teachers and their impact on student learning.</p>
<p>If we are to continue to offer teaching as an undergraduate qualification - and I don’t think we should for reasons outlined below - we must set <a href="http://www.bca.com.au/Content/101446.aspx">minimum acceptable standards</a> for entry and as a general rule draw our candidates from the top quartile. </p>
<p>Many will cite equity issues in that high school students from certain backgrounds and geographic locations experience disadvantage which is reflected in their final ATAR scores. We do need to recognise this and to attract a broadly representative teaching service, but accepting candidates with very low secondary school marks is not the way to do this, particularly if it sets them up for failure.</p>
<p>We need other measures of suitability to teaching to augment ATAR scores. </p>
<p>But I do believe that the days of taking people straight from school, training them as teachers and then sending them back to school, often in the same geographical area from which they have come, is no longer appropriate. Graduate entry teaching degrees are attracting candidates with high undergraduate academic performance who are older, more experienced and have made a mature decision to become a teacher.</p>
<p>It is time the issue of the standard of entrants to teaching was addressed. In fact, it’s overdue. If entry scores to undergraduate programs are allowed to continue to decline there will be a heavy price. All the effort around improving the quality of teachers, the quality of teaching and student achievement in this country will be undermined. The quality of teaching needs to be addressed at each <a href="http://works.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1079&context=stephen_dinham&sei-redir=1">point of leverage</a> but the quality of those entering the profession is a crucial issue.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/11677/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stephen Dinham has received ARC funding.</span></em></p>Despite all the talk about improving the quality of teachers and teaching in Australia, the general downward slide of entry standards to undergraduate teacher training courses continues. While the top…Stephen Dinham, Chair of Teacher Education and Director of Learning and Teaching, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/99492012-10-03T20:26:58Z2012-10-03T20:26:58ZLimited numbers: what university rankings can (and can’t) tell us<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/16123/original/9pv2whvt-1349242621.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=23%2C5%2C3859%2C2586&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Ranking universities is useful for only understanding the bigger picture.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">University image from www.shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The release of <a href="http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-university-rankings/">The Times Higher Education World University Rankings</a> will be welcomed by many people in the Australian university sector.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>See the full list of The Times Higher Education World University Ranking <a href="http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-university-rankings/2012-13/world-ranking">here</a></em></p>
<p><em>View rankings by <a href="http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-university-rankings/">region</a></em></p>
<hr>
<p>Australia now has eight universities in the top 200, one more than last year, with the University of Adelaide joining this top grouping at 176. </p>
<p>Six of this group improved their positions, with Melbourne University rising to 28 (up from 37 last year) while ANU, moved from 38 to 37. </p>
<p>The other Australian universities were: Sydney University (62), Queensland University (65), UNSW (85), Monash (99) and UWA (190).</p>
<figure><table><thead><tr><th>Australian Institution</th><th>2011-12 rank</th><th>2012-13 rank</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>University of Melbourne</td><td>37</td><td>28</td></tr><tr><td>Australian National University</td><td>38</td><td>37</td></tr><tr><td>University of Sydney</td><td>58</td><td>62</td></tr><tr><td>Queensland University</td><td>74</td><td>65</td></tr><tr><td>University of New South Wales</td><td>173</td><td>85</td></tr><tr><td>Monash University</td><td>117</td><td>99</td></tr><tr><td>University of Adelaide</td><td>201-225</td><td>176</td></tr><tr><td>University of Western Australia</td><td>189</td><td>190</td></tr></tbody></table><figcaption>Sourced from The Times Higher Education World University Rankings.</figcaption></figure>
<p>But an important story here is not how well individual universities have done, but what the rankings say about the sector overall. </p>
<h2>What goes into the rankings ‘sausage’</h2>
<p>While this is generally good news for Australian universities, we should view the results carefully and be mindful of the limitations in the story they tell us. The challenge of rankings, is recognising their value without using them in perverse ways.</p>
<p>The Times Higher Education (THE) ranking was developed in 2004, based initially on surveys of reputation, staffing ratios, research and other indicators. In recent years, the majority of the ranking (around 70%) has been derived from indicators around research, predominantly research reputation, citations and funding. The rest of the ranking captures teaching, learning and a few other markers. </p>
<p>This creates limits in what the rankings can tell us. The reliance on surveys means that “perceptions” can distort the story that (more) objective indicators, such as citations, tell us about an institution. The rankings become a delicate mix of hard data and ingrained prejudice by the world’s academics. </p>
<p>A second issue is the (necessarily) retrospective nature of much of the hard data. Citations measures pick up research often started a decade or longer ago, failing to tell us much about important research just building momentum now.</p>
<h2>The bigger picture</h2>
<p>Despite the limitations in what any ranking can tell us, they still have an important story to tell. It is not what individual institutions have done in the past or how their peers view them, but rather that the Australian system is doing well, and in this way we “punches above our weight” (to use the obligatory phrase since <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Darcy">Les Darcy</a> when discussing anything Australia does well in the international arena).</p>
<p>Like any imperfect proxy, the rankings of individual institutions hint at the health of the system overall, even if there are inevitable instances where we can do better. As the Times press release reflects, Australia does well on the average movement of our top 200 institutions, with our universities from this top group raising an average of 15 places. </p>
<p>The other established (though bigger) systems in the US and UK had institutions demoted. </p>
<p>Australia has also joined the increasing appearance in the top rankings of universities in the Asia-Pacific, which are challenging the position of the long established university systems around the world. This indicates perhaps that on reputation Australian academics appear increasingly well-regarded. </p>
<h2>Using rankings wisely</h2>
<p>The trick then is to appreciate that rankings can be a useful proxy, giving us a partial picture of what is going on at universities. But they don’t yet capture all the valuable features of Australian higher education. </p>
<p>We should not fund universities based on their performance in the Times or other major rankings such as the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) from Shanghai Jiao Tong University. As much as this would be another way to reward excellence, much of what universities accomplish is not (yet) picked up in any ranking system. </p>
<p>For instance, a great achievement of the Australian system is its commitment to broad access higher education on a massive scale. But this is an achievement that probably has not so far won any university a higher placing. </p>
<p>Rankings then are useful as the proverbial canary in the coal (research) mine, telling us over a period of years where our performance is lagging. As long as we remember that by the time our canary shows signs of serious ill health, the problem (lagging research performance) is probably worse than we think. </p>
<p>So they may tell us where we are doing better in research performance and the popularity contest, but this can only be so useful over the long run. Popularity and reputation, may fail to tell us where research that makes the lives of Australians better, or builds our national prosperity, is occurring today. Or where the best education is on offer here and now.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/9949/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gwilym Croucher works for the University of Melbourne as a policy analyst in the Office of the Vice-Chancellor.</span></em></p>The release of The Times Higher Education World University Rankings will be welcomed by many people in the Australian university sector. See the full list of The Times Higher Education World University…Gwilym Croucher, Higher Education Policy Adviser, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/75412012-06-25T01:10:00Z2012-06-25T01:10:00ZUniversity ranking rankles: playing the prestige game<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/11882/original/vfshgvy7-1340074687.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=12%2C28%2C2110%2C1446&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Future students need more than rankings to make the best choice. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP Image/Julian Smith</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Australian universities compete with providers all over the globe. The stakes are high and it is hard to ignore world rankings. </p>
<p>In The Conversation recently, however, University of Southern Queensland’s Vice-Chancellor, Professor Jan Thomas, <a href="https://theconversation.com/universities-cant-all-be-the-same-its-time-we-embraced-diversity-7379">questioned the value of rankings locally</a>, and outlined why her university steers clear of rankings altogether. </p>
<h2>Ranking rivalries</h2>
<p>Australian universities naturally want to perform well against our international rivals and attract good students and the best staff. But in the domestic context, rankings have a discriminatory effect for little gain, marginalising and devaluing the work of smaller universities. </p>
<p>The corrosive effect of rankings may not be confined to regional institutions or urban universities outside the Group of Eight (Go8). All universities are understandably jealous of their brand and project this immaterial asset as forcefully as they can.</p>
<p>For some, the rank achieved on league tables reinforces domestic marketing strategies as well as those abroad. One could argue that this emphasis fosters prejudice among prospective students. Advertising promiscuously by any mark of distinction, the sector encourages students to see universities through properties sometimes little better than snob-value. </p>
<p>Rankings tend to validate this bias, with much swagger and presumption among the proud, to the point that even academics view their institutions through performance in rankings, rather than their own experiences.</p>
<p>But inevitably, rankings yield only a partial picture. Consider the great influence that research income has upon many indicators. Any university with a medical faculty is likely to be able to show greater per capita research funding than a university without a medical faculty, because medical research is expensive. The engorged research budget of a big university with costly sciences does not mean that research in any other field in the university (much less teaching) is superior than in counterparts without a medical faculty. </p>
<p>Alas, the university with the bigger research budget will automatically rank higher and is assumed to have preeminence – a distinction that hardly amounts to good science. </p>
<h2>Discriminating indicators</h2>
<p>Rankings are carried out by government and private institutions alike in the name of productivity and choice. They are based on measures of questionable value and generate disproportionate interest. </p>
<p>To be fair, university rankings are not entirely baseless and they are at least more tangible than some of the marketing tricks we see on advertising billboards. Further, we tend to be sympathetic to the large and successful universities, given that their status overseas is at issue; and all figures – no matter how invidious locally – count toward the international marketing of Australian education.</p>
<p>However, our necessary participation in these competitions has some unhappy effects; and I wonder what might mitigate their negative moral consequences. </p>
<p>At this stage, the <a href="http://myuniversity.gov.au/">MyUniversity website</a> concentrates on teaching quality, student demographic and retention. It’s only a matter of time before other prestige factors are measured. </p>
<p>Even if such data are never to be included on MyUniversity, the universities themselves vigorously conduct local marketing to project a brand which rests on inscrutable combinations of course-choices, immaterial factors (mood, excitement, atmosphere, culture), elite student or staff achievement and, if they have anything to boast about, rankings.</p>
<h2>Smoke and mirrors</h2>
<p>One would hope that the basis for students choosing a course would involve matching what they most want to study with what the several universities offer. But universities rather encourage students to choose using the smoke and mirrors of prestige. </p>
<p>Many universities cultivate associations of competitive glamour in a shameless spirit, as with the merchandising of anything, when more reasoned processes should be encouraged. Do we need to promote the idea that one university is constitutionally better than another? </p>
<p>Before they get to university, prospective students are inducted into an elitist language of prejudice. Research graduates, who are savvy and experienced, find their way to specific staff or departments with a glowing reputation in the field thanks to their publications. But school leavers don’t have the opportunity to select their academic mentors, so we tend to appeal to their general conceit. </p>
<p>There is no point wishing rankings and branding away; and it’s only natural that any university with something to boast about will broadcast its glory. </p>
<p>Nevertheless, good taste suggests that success in rankings is best reserved for international marketing where we wish all contenders the very best fortune. Branding, meanwhile, should indicate a philosophical position with a social or environmental or creative purpose. </p>
<p>In the higher education sector, it should be assumed that we encourage students to find their courses according to reason.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/7541/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Robert Nelson receives at various times grants from funding bodies.</span></em></p>Australian universities compete with providers all over the globe. The stakes are high and it is hard to ignore world rankings. In The Conversation recently, however, University of Southern Queensland’s…Robert Nelson, Associate Director Student Experience, Monash UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/73792012-06-05T01:24:58Z2012-06-05T01:24:58ZUniversities can’t all be the same – it’s time we embraced diversity<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/11285/original/dvbq47hs-1338527448.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=6%2C5%2C633%2C598&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">All cut out to fit the same mould? We can't assume that all universities are trying to be the same.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Flickr/walterh</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>James Cook University drew a lot of attention in the higher education sector recently <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/higher-education/uni-boycotts-rankings-system/story-e6frgcjx-1226363939248">by publicly</a> “<a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/higher-education/opinion/jcu-was-never-in-the-game/story-e6frgcko-1226372910060">opting out</a>” of the Times Higher Education (THE) <a href="http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-university-rankings/">World University rankings</a>. Their reason was simple enough – the rankings do not reflect a university’s true worth.</p>
<p>For much the same reasons, my university, the University of Southern Queensland (USQ), has never participated in the rankings. They have a clear bias against specialised, regional, <a href="http://www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=20120530142927343">English-speaking universities</a> that cannot be ignored.</p>
<p>As the idea of what a university is changes, it could be that these rankings are holding education back - geared to a traditional model that asks only for conformity.</p>
<h2>Diversify or perish</h2>
<p>The university “brand” has been developed over some eight centuries. There have been many changes in that time, with much regional variation. For example, in the 19th century British universities were largely teaching institutions while German universities took leadership in research.</p>
<p>However, over the past sixty years, “brand university” has galvanised around a particular model characterised by a comprehensive coverage of disciplines, a heavy emphasis on research, prestigious flagship teaching programs in areas such as medicine, and highly selective entry requirements for students. </p>
<p>Today, the traditional university brand is so strong that when the word “university” is mentioned, the image that most people immediately think of is an elite, conservative, research-intensive higher education institution that is steeped in ancient academic tradition, aloof from its community.</p>
<p>A problem with this standardised notion of a university is that it runs counter to just about everything that is needed for the Australian university sector to prosper – both economically and in terms of its position in society. </p>
<p>The government has emphasised <a href="http://www.deewr.gov.au/HigherEducation/Review/Pages/default.aspx">through the Bradley report</a> that rather than having a sector consisting of 39 universities that are all the same, we should be striving for a diverse higher education sector. Universities need diversity just like business or industry does – to stimulate competition, to encourage innovation and to meet diverse needs.</p>
<p>But the power of brand university means there are consequences for institutions that choose to operate outside of this particular mould.</p>
<h2>Damned if you do…</h2>
<p>As a case in point, universities such as my own that pursue a mission that seeks to broaden educational participation by providing opportunities for non-traditional student groups are slammed from all quarters.</p>
<p>Rather than being praised for being able to bring often poorly prepared students up to graduation quality, or for building social capital in communities, these universities have to endure the stigma of poor performance ratings that are geared to the standard brand university model.</p>
<p>Most university ranking schemes place a heavy emphasis on accumulated research performance, which will naturally exalt research-intensive universities and gloss over the strong research performance in smaller universities.</p>
<p>However, even when measures of learning and teaching are considered, institutions departing from the brand university model still miss out.</p>
<p>Retention rates are a great example. The very act of enrolling from a diverse student constituency – including adults who are studying part-time with family and work responsibilities – while rigorously enforcing unforgiving graduation standards, means retention rates will be lower than traditional institutions. </p>
<p>Still, retention remains a proxy indicator for teaching quality and universities with lower retention rates are perceived accordingly.</p>
<p>We are still awaiting the development of a performance indicator that measures how much an institution’s learning and teaching program adds to a disadvantaged student’s performance.</p>
<h2>Stagnant model</h2>
<p>There is a view that has emerged from the rigidly hierarchical US higher education system that all universities are striving to become Ivy League institutions – that the ultimate aim is to live up to the “brand university” name. </p>
<p>The assumption then is that universities that are different from this model must be inferior institutions still on a developmental path. Nothing could be further from the truth. </p>
<p>My own university, for example, has a long and proud history of pursuing its own particular mission concerned with widening higher educational opportunity, producing career-ready graduates in the professions, working closely with business and industry and contributing to regional development. These are the things we are passionate about. </p>
<p>We have a job to do and a part to play – and we do what we do exceptionally well.</p>
<p>If the government is serious about supporting a diverse Australian higher education sector, it needs to do more to ensure that the individual strengths and contributions of universities of all types and persuasions are better understood, appreciated and acknowledged.</p>
<p>In Greek mythology, the bandit Procrustes would stretch and sever the limbs of his guests to fit the size of his bed. We, too, are continuing to stretch and shape our higher education to a particular standard to the detriment of students and society alike.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/7379/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jan Thomas is Vice-Chancellor & President of the University of Southern Queensland. She is also affiliated with Universities Australia. Professor Thomas has been a member of an expert advisory group to the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations whose focus was on developing higher education performance indicators in association with the Commonwealth government. Professor Thomas has been an auditor for the Australian Universities Quality Agency (AUQA) and an international reviewer for accrediting agencies in Oman and Hong Kong.</span></em></p>James Cook University drew a lot of attention in the higher education sector recently by publicly “opting out” of the Times Higher Education (THE) World University rankings. Their reason was simple enough…Jan Thomas, Vice-Chancellor, University of Southern QueenslandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.