Reshaping Higher Education

Abstract

Modern day rankings emerged because of what was perceived to be a lack of publicly available information about the quality and performance of higher education. National rankings, such as USNWR or Maclean’s University Rankings, are often a commercial product providing consumer-type information for undergraduate students and their parents. Similar college guides or league tables have been developed in other countries, produced in the main by media companies. The appearance of global rankings in 2003 had a revolutionizing affect. ARWU, followed quickly by THE-QS and Webometrics and then many others, coincided with and exploited fundamental shifts in the global economy and, in particular, the fact that human and knowledge capital formation had become the key barometer of global competitiveness.

Hospitals, banks, airlines and other public and private institutions serving the public are compared and ranked, why not universities? (Egron-Polak, 2007)

Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts (Sign hanging in Einstein’s office at Princeton).