A culture of ranking is dominating today’s world. University rankings such as Times Higher Education and Quacquarelli Symonds create a huge uproar. But should they really deserve to be the yardstick of excellence in today’s higher education?
The concept of a university
There has been a paradigm shift in the concept of a university in the modern era from the ancient times when universities like Nalanda and Taxila existed. In his 1852 book, The Idea of a University, John Henry Newman assumed that knowledge should be pursued “for its own sake”. Newman used the ancient designation of a Studium Generale, or “School of Universal Learning”. “A University seems to be in its essence, a place for the communication and circulation of thought, by means of personal intercourse, through a wide extent of country,” Newman wrote.
The idea of the university, however, was shaped through the reforms of Wilhelm von Humboldt in Prussia. Ever since the University of Berlin was founded in 1810, the ‘Humboldtian’ university became a model for Europe, and subsequently for the research universities of the U.S. The central Humboldtian principle was the fusion of teaching and research in the work of the individual scholar, and the objective of the university was to advance knowledge by original and critical investigation, not just to transmit the legacy of the past or to teach skills.
In India, the Universities of Calcutta, Bombay and Madras were established in 1857. The immediate interest was to produce graduates to fill up the salaried positions emerging in the wake of colonial rule. The mottos of these universities, however, were “Advancement of Learning”, “Śīlastataphalā Vidyā” (The Fruit of Learning is Character and Righteous Conduct), and “Doctrina Vim Promovet Insitam” (Learning Promotes Natural Talent), respectively. In 1919, Rabindranath Tagore wrote: “the primary function of our University should be the constructive work of knowledge”.
While the concept of a university has evolved a lot, blaming the contemporary universities from Newman’s standpoint would be like blaming a jet engine for not having the excellences of a windmill, as the philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre said.
Back to ranking. In fact, weighted averages of scores for several performance-related criteria are considered for ranking of the universities. The criteria and their weights differ from one ranking organisation to another. Change in weights may produce a different list of rankings. The criteria constitute research income from industry; ratio of international to domestic staff and students; number of students, research papers, citations; etc. Small but important institutes might thus trail in the ranking race. Also, many people think ‘citation’ is an inappropriate measure of usefulness of a research paper.
The most controversial part of the ranking methodology maybe reputational survey or academic peer review, where opinions of academics get importance. This component has significant weight, and these rankings have come in for criticism for too much emphasis on perception. Last year, seven leading IITs announced that they would boycott one such ranking, saying they are not satisfied with the transparency of the process.
Churning out papers
Research publication is important to enhance the rank. Academics are expected to keep churning out papers. An institute invariably seeks a list of recent publications once or twice a year from its faculty members. But how does that help in quality research? Peter Higgs, the 2013 Nobel Laureate in Physics, believes that he would not have got a job in today’s academic system because he would not be considered “productive” enough. When his department at Edinburgh University would ask for a list of recent publications, Higgs would reply: “None”. Still, today’s academics are mostly confined within the world of such ‘compulsory’ research and publication, for mere survival.
The concept of a university should not be the same everywhere. Universities at Chicago, Harvard and Oxford might fancy making the achievements of their students or professors the yardstick of excellence. However, there are many universities which cater to the local people as the only spectacles of higher education and prism of enlightenment. Their importance is no less than the ‘elite’ universities. A university should be judged within its social perspective.
The worth of university rankings, thus, is not very clear. “When we see a foreign University, we see only its smaller body – its buildings, its furniture, its regulations, its syllabus; its larger body is not present to us. But as the kernel of the coconut is in the whole coconut, so the University,” Tagore envisaged a century ago. We might need to redefine the idea of a university within the framework of an ever-changing social perspective and need.
Atanu Biswas is Professor of Statistics, Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata