The dubious system that decides which university is best

The three global rankings that dominate the field are highly skewed against institutions in the Global South, writes Palesa Molebatsi

University rankings play a more influential role than we may understand. They shape the work of administrators and researchers in institutions of higher education, and they influence students and parents regarding their choice of institution, programme and so on.

The field is dominated by the global university rankings, which are based on a variety of indicators — including entry standards, student satisfaction, research funding and outputs and citations. To each indicator a score is assigned; a score that supposedly, though doubtfully, reflects the quality of the institution at a glance using “university league tables”.

The three most influential and widely observed university rankings are those issued by Times Higher Education (THE), Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) and Shanghai Ranking. The hegemony of elite institutions is so entrenched that the top 100 places in the most influential rankings are monopolised by just 20 countries — all in Europe, North America, East Asia or Australasia. Argentina is the only

South American nation to feature.

Two main trends characterise the global university rankings. The first is the rise in internationalisation. The need for institutions to compete across the world has grown significantly, especially as academics and students alike are required to demonstrate intercultural competence in global education and labour markets.

Definitions of internationalisation differ by country, but one used widely is the idea that it is the process of integrating an international culture into higher education institutions. This goes handin-hand with the social-technical imagining of a unified and harmonious global future. Caution must be exercised, however, where integration is concerned. For example, notions of what it means for an institution of higher education to be “responsive” differ by country and context. While an emphasis on research may be considered responsive to needs in the Global North, the same may not be true in the Global South, where academic success rates are low among the predominantly disadvantaged student bodies, creating the need for an emphasis on teaching. Of significance here is that most rankings have a clear tendency towards research.

The second main trend is the desire to simplify otherwise complex comparisons between institutions. The dominance of numerical ways of thinking has strongly influenced the measures that have become the most prominent when researchers or policymakers analyse higher education systems and institutions. Numerical approaches allow for fairly simple, though superficial, observations to be made and conclusions to be drawn about the comparative quality of institutions. Despite their superficiality, their simplicity makes numerical approaches seductive for those who do not have knowledge of the complexity of higher education institutions.

Together, internationalisation and simplification lead to the gross neglect of the diversity of institutions. This diversity arises in terms of funding, size, function and age.

African higher education institutions tend to be young. Before 1960, only 18 of the 48 countries on the continent at the time had universities. By 2021 Africa had as many as 688 universities, 26 of them in South Africa. Only 11 African universities feature in Shanghai Rankings’ academic ranking of world universities.

African higher education institutions struggle to compete in conventional rankings. Apart from not performing well in terms of research, they struggle to score well in any of the other areas such as attracting international faculty. So it is not surprising they fail to take the top spots.

As a result of their exclusionary nature, rankings are heavily criticised. They make pronouncements based on some seemingly dubious assumptions relating to what constitutes quality; and their methods compare whole institutions from around the world using the same sets of indicators that disregard contextual nuances.

The THE ranking features three South African universities in its top 300. The University of Cape Town is Africa’s top university, in the 160th position, while Stellenbosch University and Wits University are in the 250-300 bracket.

Because rankings provide a snapshot of the current moment, they invisibilise the histories of institutions of higher education that constitute some of the contextual nuances. Stellenbosch University, established in 1918, is situated in a wine-growing region along the banks of the Eersterivier. The university has for many years produced research and skilled graduates to support the commercial wine industry in the Western

Cape, and has done so through the significant financial endowments conferred by the commercial wine industry. If institutions are ranked and compared on the basis of research funding then it goes without saying that the mechanisms that privilege some institutions over others have in part to do with continuities between the past and the present.

It is not obviously the case that universities have to be ranked. While they can be compared along a vertical spectrum, the horizontal spectrum is better suited to account for the diversity of institutions — showing differences in financial endowment, size, function and the age of institutions.

It also goes without saying that any metric that assesses the quality of higher education institutions ought to measure whether they increase equity, access and responsiveness and promote local economic and social development. Alternative rankings are on the rise, and quickly so. One such example is from QS, “World University Rankings: Sustainability 2023”. Nine of South Africa’s universities are among the 16 in Africa that make this list. But this alternative ranking metric, like many others, continues to privilege the most elite institutions — the frontrunner among African universities again being UCT.

Even with their glaring limitations, university rankings endure. Their shaky legitimacy shows the need for metrics that provide sincere assessments of the characteristics of institutions in the Global South and what their contributions to quality higher education are and should be.

Notions of what it means for an institution of higher education to be ‘responsive’ differ