Yes to Rankings, but not at the Expense of Purpose

“New Structures, Governance, and Measures of Success”: a Transcript of Our Contribution to TIESS/DIDAC 2022.

At Indian Higher Education, our objective is to provide a forum for influential voices in the sector to reflect on and discuss key issues and opportunities in the sector, and to strengthen our combined voice in the context of government, policy and society.   Our global editorial team brings together a perspective of the old and new from many different settings, and we have seen the best and worst in multiple contexts. 

Within the title we have been given to speak on, it is the “measures of success” that interest us the most.   Reading recently about the publicised questioning of the NAAC and its processes, and hearing about the proposed evolution of the UGC into a four-pronged Higher Education Council, it is clear that quality, compliance, and performance and how these can be assessed and measured is a key impetus in the sector here at the moment.  Looking at outputs which can be externally assessed or peer reviewed is critical. 

But it’s not straight forward. What matters most in HE?  How do we reduce it to things we can meaningfully quantify?  At one level, you might say: “it’s not hard” – we have research, we have teaching and learning, student outcomes, employability. These can be broken down and assessed.

But it needs to be a path that is carefully chosen. Take the increasingly absurd journey that other countries such as the UK have been on.  

There, it is a process that has run for several decades.  

To the credit of the bureaucrats, they recognised that the question “what really matters in HE, and how can we measure it?”, is not easy to answer. Rather than attempt a thoughtful approach to the problem, however, their way of addressing it was: “let’s measure absolutely everything we can, in the hope that we will eventually have a meaningful synthesis”. Roll forward to the present day and you have the REF, TEF, KEF (three “excellence frameworks” around research, teaching and enterprise), the national student survey and at least three recognised national ranking systems plus many other indices. You have a Higher Education Statistics Agency that sits at the heart of a system where most HE institutions are returning at least 100 sets of data a year, more if they have a medical school. Is it an industry that serves itself, or serves the development of the sector?  Does it benefit the sector eventually if all of the staff are measuring themselves but not actually focused on the purposes they entered academia for?

And look at this in a global context. The past 25 years has seen a reverse take-over of Higher Education globally by the rankings industry, largely employing a one size fits all model that is heavily rigged in favour of a small number of historic Anglo-Saxon exemplars. 

This process means that, across the world, university governing bodies are fixated on league table positioning as the be-all and end-all of institutional success. Heaven forbid that they might think about purpose, strategy or mission.  

And governments have also become fixated on a small number of indices such as graduate earning potential, an obsession that steers everything towards STEMM disciplines and dilutes the principles of liberal education on which those exemplar Anglo-Saxon Universities were founded.  In the European context there is a slightly healthier interest in broader measures such as the life-long engagement in democracy and even the longer-term health benefits that correlate with HE participation. 

There is a clear desire implicit in the NEP to increase the number of Indian Universities that stand out in global rankings. And why not? There are already many outstanding institutions in this country, and some of this success can be achieved with small tweaks and jumping through the rankings and hurdles differently.  Internationalising student and academic communities is a potential, if costly, route for making a rapid impact, as has been enjoyed at Universities such as OP Jindal. 

But, in our view, there’s a risk in chasing this too much.  Fundamentally it means that universities are no longer mission-led but exist to fulfil transactional purposes.  The pendulum has swung too far in many systems around the world and there is a jadedness amongst academics and students alike about it. 

It is worth reflecting that, just under two centuries ago, the Ivy league institutions in USA went through seismic soul-searching and reform reflecting on how to respond to their society’s needs.   Critically, the soul-searching was not just about skills (although it included that) but it was also about broader societal depth and development. The reforms in approaches to pedagogy and HE generally that emerged from this were a critical key to success of American Higher Education. It was a moment of disruption. 

And perhaps the most exciting question here is: “what kind of Universities does India need?”. How will the evolving diversity of sector here support the development of the country and be different from any other sector in the world?  

Of course, the country should conquer the league tables, and it deserves to succeed in this. But surely the more exciting question is where we should focus energy. Why should we let anyone else define our own measures of success?