When you’re choosing a university, you want to make sure that it supports your career goals and personal aspirations. You may prioritize factors such as the location, language of instruction or the alumni network. You may also weigh the ranking of a college alongside recommendations from peers, your own experiences, and the advice of experts. But it’s easy to get caught up in the ranking game and end up making decisions that don’t align with your goals.
With dozens of ranking organizations (and even more that specialize in world rankings, regional or discipline-specific university rankings), it can be difficult to keep track of the different methodologies, data sources and indicators that are used. Rankings can also have their own biases based on specific disciplines, institutions, languages or regions.
The ranking of universities often uses bibliometric indicators, such as the number of articles published in high-impact journals. While these are useful as a proxy for the quality of research, it is important to recognize that they can be prone to a range of biases. The focus on citations and journal impact factor in particular can distort the results of the ranking by rewarding certain types of research.
As a result, university ranking can have detrimental effects if it becomes the primary driver for decision-making at a university. Instead, universities should be focused on promoting academic services and knowledge, supporting students’ educational needs and addressing societal challenges. It took decades for the damaging effect of publishing rankings to be recognized, but it is time to put an end to it before it’s too late.