University Ranking: A Misguided Pursuit?

University Ranking: A Misguided Pursuit?
in response to:
Universities and their irrelevant rankings, 2010/08/26 By Zakri Abdul Hamid
http://www.nst.com.my/nst/articles/17zak/Article/#ixzz0xxfh9RkD

The current pursuit of climbing the ladder of ranking in the Research University (RU) is stifling intense among the local five RU sisters (UPM, USM, UM, UKM and UTM), derailing them on their basic triple mission of existence, i.e., knowledge, humankind and society. Translating this mission into functions means research, teaching and community service.

Professor Datok Zakri (NST, 28 Aug 2010) has blatantly revealed our misguided notion that scoring high marks in the ranking forms is the ultimate stamping of a “high-ranked’ university. The “publish or perish” order was overly emphasised to the extent of imposing one measure of publication targets for all disciplines alike – be it music, anthropology, theology, performance art or science. Community service, professional training, public debate or policy discussion are considered irrelevant and of little value in the ranking criteria. The realms of our societal struggles for integration, equitable wealth, and sustainable development are perceived as non-academic, even ranked lower then the articles submitted to the international journals in the west. This oversight may prove costly to the nation, in the long term.

Ranking is inevitable in a highly competitive global education market. It’s the best weapon of market promotion as customers (parents, students and sponsors) continuously seeking where to bet their education investment. The public at large uses it as a measure of accountability and governance. It’s a brilliant means of external communiqué. But, the solid foundation of a university lies also in its quality teaching and education, meaningful research that are translatable to wealth creation and societal well being and bridging knowledge and technology to the margins of the society. Capsuling these big functions into an indicator for e.g. KPI (Key Performance Index) to be used as input for ranking runs the danger of misrepresenting, understating and errors of omission.

Hence, the indicator has to be used with cautions. Many studies have proven so. Reliance on a narrow based yardstick to measure a multi-dimensional role of a university cuts the big picture into what the creator of the yardstick wants to see.
There are serious matters at hand that need to be addressed urgently. The quality of lecturers and students and their poor command of languages particularly English. The local university graduates perpetually scaled lower than the overseas trained. The employers have a lot of complaints on local graduates, year to year. Local body of knowledge is underdeveloped as researchers continue to secure names by publishing in the western journals. Local books and scholarly publications are marginalised as researchers turn to the western publishers. Our students will have to continue to buy textbooks from the west with minimal local contents.

No companies or individuals would want to study social issues or predicament. It does not give financial returns to them. But the university is duty bound to serve the society through research, basic or applied to address problems such as poverty, low productivity, developmental issues, climate change, resource depletion and many more. Those issues are begging for answers. Who best to address these issues through knowledge if not our local academics.