The new university league table U-Multirank, launched by the European Commission on 13 May, should be seen as part of a worldwide trend for greater disclosure of information.
Over the past decades, and accelerated by the fiscal constraints which have engulfed many member states and individuals as a result of the economic crisis, there has been growing public clamour for publicly-funded organisations to be more accountable and transparent about how they use public money.
Concerns include not just the amount of funding, but also the outcomes, impact and benefits. This arises from universal understanding that, in the global knowledge society, higher education plays an indispensable role in creating competitive advantage for nations and for graduates. Given this, the performance of universities is now a matter of great public interest.
The idea of a new kind of ranking was first mooted during the French presidency of the European Union in 2008. Then, there was plenty of unease about the poor showing of European universities in the growing number of global rankings.
Reflecting diversity
Thus, in contrast to the Academic Ranking of World Universities, produced by Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China, which ranks universities according to their research prowess, or the QS World University Ranking published by the Times Higher Education in the UK, it was argued that a new EU ranking should reflect the full diversity of institutional missions and the breadth of activity across teaching, research, and engagement.
The concept was based upon U-Map, the EU-sponsored European classification system, launched 2009. In the same year, a consortium was established to initially test the feasibility of setting up a multidimensional university ranking.
In the intervening years there have been a number of similar initiatives around the world. Whether in Australia, the UK or Catalonia, Spain, governments are now putting institutional performance data online. To a greater or lesser extent these websites enable users to interrogate and compare institutions according to student and staff numbers, graduation rates, staff academic qualifications, tuition fees, and so on.
The US government is about to launch its own ratings scheme, known as the Postsecondary Institution Rating System. This seeks to link access, affordability and outcomes.
Other initiatives, such as the Irish performance evaluation framework, are not online although this is probably only a matter of time.
Pressure to report
U-Multirank is more sophisticated and more ambitious than these schemes. Because it is a European project, it has member states or university organisations behind it and can rely, to a certain extent, on pressure to complete the necessary reporting. Another EU project, EUMIDA, which shares consortia membership, will ultimately provide a direct data feed from each national statistical source, so self-reporting is likely to become less significant. This will also overcome institutional boycotting.
At the moment, U-Multirank has information covering more than 850 higher education institutions, 1,000 faculties and 5,000 study programmes. It has however deviated from some initial promises. The range of indicators is greater, but it has not cracked the problem of measuring the quality of teaching and learning, and quantity is still too easily equated with quality.
In other words, the measurements are not necessarily measures of quality but simply measures of activity. A numerical computation is also available by moving the curser over the various icons, which will most certainly facilitate ordinal ranking.
Its objective to compete with and overtake the three main global rankings is also less likely, not least because it will it require many more HEIs from outside Europe to join up. The current U-Multirank used publicly accessible bibliometric and patent data to give a semblance of geographic spread across 74 countries. There are discussions going on with the Chinese but the real fish to catch is the US. That will be very difficult given the strong ethos of institutional autonomy.
Promoting higher education in Europe
Thus, the real aim and benefit of U-Multirank should be for Europe. European higher education lies at heart of the Europe 2020 ambition to “turn the EU into a smart, sustainable and inclusive economy.” The Bologna Process and creation of the European Higher Education Area, have been important achievements in this respect.
U-Multirank can be a portal for student mobility, within Europe and between Europe and the rest of the world. We can use it to actively promote higher education in Europe as a genuinely international educational experience, across diverse institutions, focused on learning outcomes and aided by structured mobility, credit accumulation/transfer, quality assurance and qualification recognition.
Rather than being fixated on out-ranking the rankings – the aim should be to get U-Multirank to work in and for Europe. That would be a good start.
Professor Ellen Hazelkorn is Director of Ireland’s Higher Education Policy Research Unit and Policy Advisor to the Higher Education Authority
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