Convergence and Diversity: The Role and Influence of University Rankings

Abstract

Over the last two decades league tables or rankings of universities and academic programs have come to prominence around the world. Following the publication of college and university rankings by US News and World Report (USNWR) in 1983, often identified as the first of the national rankings of universities (van Dyke, 2005), league tables have become a minor international industry. National league tables subsequently appeared in Canada, the UK, Australia, Europe, Eastern Europe, Asia, and Latin America. In some cases rankings were produced by academic researchers such as those at the University of Melbourne and the Shanghai Jiao Tong University, or by not for profit organizations such as the Centre for Higher Education Development (CHE) in Germany or the National Academy of Sciences in the US. But in the vast majority of cases league tables are produced by commercial publications. Most of the league tables suggest they are designed to inform student choice and as such provide rankings of entire universities, and/or rankings of academic degree programs, including first degree programs, professional programs such as MBAs and law degrees, and research doctoral programs. The initial USNWR rankings were based entirely on reputational surveys of college presidents and deans. Reputational surveys continue to play an important role in most of the available league tables, but they have now been supplemented with data on various measures of university input, process, or output (Dill and Soo, 2005). National research league tables have also been produced in conjunction with government performance funding initiatives inspired by the output-oriented budgeting theories of the New Public Management (NPM) (Kettl, 2005). These include the Research Assessment Exercise in the UK and the Quantum Research Fund in Australia. However since these research rankings are intended to inform government funding of research, they are quite different in purpose and design from the commercial and not for profit league tables that are most often oriented toward informing student consumers. Consequently, I will

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