Utrecht, Zurich universities to publish joint criticism of university rankings
In a few weeks, Utrecht University and the University of Zurich will publish a joint article on the science platform LSE Impact Blog sharing their criticism of global university rankings and why they no longer participate in them. Times Higher Education published its ranking on Wednesday, showing that not a single Dutch university made it into the top 50.
Utrecht and Swiss universities stopped providing data to the trade journal. Because they find the rankings one-sided and too focused on research publications. It also means that they are less visible to potential students and researchers, a spokesperson for Utrecht University told NU.nl. “We notice that other universities are wary of that.”
Therefore, Utrecht University decided to team up with the University of Zurich to take action against these rankings. They’ll post their article on their experiences on the LSE Impact Blog within the next few weeks.
After last year’s Times Higher Education ranking was released, Utrecht University published a statement saying it opted not to participate. The university decided not to provide data to the Times for inclusion on the list, saying it puts “too much emphasis on scoring and competition,” when it considers collaboration and the openness of academic research to be more important.
The university said in September 2023 that it is “virtually impossible to capture the quality of an entire university with all the different courses and disciplines in one figure.” The university also expressed skepticism about the Times’ methodology, despite ranking a respectable 66th out of over 1,900 universities in 2022.
There has been growing criticism of global higher education ranking systems in the past few years. The Association of Universities of the Netherlands (UNL) announced in July 2023 that they believe many of the rankings designed like a league table do not actually have a proper insight into the institutions that they review. The methodologies used are often “arbitrary and debatable,” the UNL argued.
The association representing the interests of all Dutch research universities argued that it is often the case that too much importance is placed on the volume of scientific publications and citations. At the same time, little attention is given to other attributes important to science, research, how successful students are after their studies, and the awards and grants universities receive.
A spokesperson for the association told NU.nl on Wednesday that rankings’ one-sided focus on publications risk that universities will push to publish more to rank higher and therefore do less to share knowledge with the general public, which is also one of their tasks. “We should not want such a perverse incentive.”
