World University Rankings 2010-11: Ranking Ranking everywhere, not one that I believe!!!

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1. 

   Santanu Bag

   12 Mar 2011

   The word university is derived from the Latin “universitas magistrorum et scholarium”, roughly meaning “community of teachers and scholars.

   “University rankings” is one of the hottest issues, which continue to attract students & parents world-wide. The two highest profile ranking systems, of course, are the QS Rankings and the THES Rankings, both of which focus on what might constitute a world class university, and on the basis of that, who is ranked where.
   This type of ranking begins with the questions:
   why do we have university systems?
   What are these systems intended to do?
   And what do we expect them to deliver – to society, to individuals and to the world at large?

   I think we must have a more elaborated type of University Ranking based on many more revised criteria other than those already taken in count, like:
   1. Be specific: The ranking should be course oriented at first, not a generalized one.
   A business school can not be compared with a law school.
   2. Inclusiveness – number of students enrolled in the tertiary sector relative to the size of its population
   3. Access – ability of a country’s tertiary system to accept and help advance students with a low level of scholastic aptitude
   4. Effectiveness – ability of country’s education system to produce graduates with skills relevant to the country’s labour market (wage premia is the measure)
   5. Attractiveness – ability of a country’s system to attract a diverse range of foreign students (using the top 10 source countries)
   6. Age range – ability of a country’s tertiary system to function as a lifelong learning institution (share of 30-39 year olds enrolled)
   7. Responsiveness – ability of the system to reform and change
   8. Social Responsibility – Whether it is delivering proper education or not.
   “What is proper education?
   Real education is that which enables one to stand on one’s own legs. The education that you are receiving now in schools and colleges is only making you a race of dyspeptics. You are working like machines merely, and living a jelly fish existence.
   We must have life-building, man-making, character-making assimilation of ideas. If you have assimilated five ideas and made them your life and character, you have more education than any man who has got by heart a whole library….Swami Vivekananda.
   9. Quality and quality assurance system: The criteria vary according to objectives and disciplines, and assessments apply to conditions that can often not be quantified. Moreover, quality changes with the development of disciplines, educational activities and environments, while different interested parties place varying emphasis on different aspects of it. However, three factors have a central place: quality as viewed by the students, quality in terms of the fulfillment of recognized academic objectives and quality in terms of the broad social relevance of courses.
   10. Appropriate & effective use of technology: University like, “Calcutta University” have to work on this a lot…

   Over the past few months there have been numerous heated public interventions about this matter – from whether universities should be little more than giant patenting offices to whether they should be managers of social justice systems.
   And though there are evident shortcomings such as the lack of clarity about what might count as a university; the view that a university-based education is the most suitable form of education to produce a knowledge-based economy and society; what is the equity/access etc range within any one country, and so on.
   However, the big question now is whether universities will see value in this kind of ranking system for its wider systemic, as opposed to institutional, possibilities, even if it is as a basis for discussing what are universities for and how might we produce more equitable knowledge societies and economies.

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