Yuan Zhenguo, a tenured professor at East China Normal University, has always been a strong opponent of any kind of university ranking system. Over the past half year, Yuan, also deputy director of the Chinese Society of Education, an organization affiliated to China’s Ministry of Education, conducted a research on university rankings worldwide before releasing a report called Risks of University Rankings in December, 2018.
There are more than 50 global university ranking systems from a dozen institutions. Among them, the education rankings from US News, QS World University Rankings, Times Higher Education (THE), and the Academic Ranking of World Universities (Shanghai Ranking) are the most influential.
A university is likely to be placed at substantially different ranks according to the different criteria and methodologies that different lists use. In the opinion of Lin Jianhua, former vice-president of Peking University (PKU), most university rankings are only looking at a part, not the whole. During the Fifth Seminar of China Education 30 Forum on December 2, 2018, where the report was released, scholars were engaged in heated debate over the role of university rankings and the scientific evaluation of higher education.
Chen Pingyuan, a professor of Chinese literature at Peking University, has been observing university rankings since 2004. That year, PKU made its debut on the THE ranking in 17th place. The university was excited to discover the good news and made public the information on the school’s website.
Chen made three speeches instantly at three universities to discuss the ranking and the spirit of higher education, publicly criticizing PKU’s decision to promote the rankings. The speeches were published in the first edition of the Journal of Educational Studies in 2005. Chen was not alone and even at PKU, many professors openly opposed the rankings. But ever since, PKU has not released any news about university rankings, despite its ups and downs on the lists.
Other less lofty universities find it difficult to stay immune from the allure of the rankings. A worrying trend in China is that some universities are operating in accordance with the rankings and even make it a main goal to elevate their place on the list.
“The university rankings are pervasive, and their influence far outweighs the role they should play,” Yuan Zhenguo told NewsChina. “We need to dampen this influence to allow the public a reasonable, sober and independent understanding [of their importance].”
Yuan argued that there is nothing wrong if some scholars make analyses, appraisals and rankings of universities, as these can provide a reference for students, parents and schools. Education authorities can still allocate resources based on these studies.
“Academic evaluation plays a role in promoting educational reform and development, but it is a double-edged sword,” Yuan said, adding that running a university should follow China’s education regulations. “If we put so much attention on the rankings, universities tend to seek quick success to try for instant benefits.”
Chen Pingyuan said the popularity of the different rankings reflects the demands of Chinese society. Public universities are required to report their academic achievements and the government needs to see them yield results.
“Generally speaking, the disadvantages of university rankings outweigh the advantages, especially where there is an emphasis on humanities,” Chen said. In response, a growing number of universities that specialize in humanities have begun offering science and engineering majors in a bid to boost their position on the rankings.
Yang Dongping, head of the 21st Century Education Research Institute, said the addition of science or engineering programs means that a university can get more physical resources, such as equipment, which will enable it to do more research, and in turn it will have a direct influence on its academic rank. “Right now, some Chinese universities are anxious to expand the size of the school simply to boost the rankings,” he told NewsChina.
According to Yuan Zhenguo, university rankings mainly have biases due to inaccurate data collection, unscientific methodologies, as well as strong cultural bias. “It is unscientific to compare a small university with a big one, a university with a focus on humanities and one specializing in engineering, and a comprehensive university with a specialized university,” he said.
Yuan said the most important function of university is the cultivation of talent but virtually all university rankings tend to neglect students’ contributions to society. “If university rankings play a guiding role, all universities worldwide will become research schools or research institutes.”
In recent years, China founded a number of research universities, such as the public Southern University of Science and Technology in Shenzhen, Guangdong Province, and the new private Westlake University in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province. These institutions have a more international outlook and have ample financial backing.
Yang Dongping, however, argued that a good university should also offer majors in humanities, which an all-round university needs to help nurture its students to the utmost.
Yet university rankings have become a baton that conducts the whole higher education orchestra. University leaders will be appraised based on the rankings, which go on to make a difference in faculty recruitment, student enrolment and in obtaining education and
financial resources. This inherent bias brings a new unfairness to the landscape of higher education.
Hong Chengwen, deputy director of the Institute of Higher Education at Beijing Normal University, has been studying university rankings for nine years. He discovered that university rankings have misled donors, who prefer to give to universities with a higher ranking. Rich universities get richer and poor universities become even poorer.
Hong told our reporter that among the top 10 universities in the US, on average 62.5 percent of Princeton alumni donated to their alma mater from 2014 to 2016, but only 30-40 percent of
alumni from universities ranked between the second and ninth place donated. Still, among the top 100 universities in the US, leading universities received up to 30 times the level of donations as universities ranked at the bottom. Princeton is still ranked No.1 in the US for 2019, according to the US News list.
“Some universities with deep pockets can easily seek talented teaching staff around the world which will in return improve their rankings. Universities without strong financial backing are like a lamb to the slaughter,” Hong said. “It’s still a battlefield – there’s just no stench of gunpowder.”
In China, the level of government financing universities receive is closely linked to their status. Institutions now classed as having “double first-class” status, a category of top-performing universities the Ministry of Education created in September 2017 as a way to provide new impetus for higher education development, get much more financial support and other resources. There are currently 42 “double first-class” universities and 95 universities ranked “first-class.”
Xu Hui, vice-president of Zhejiang Normal University, said China’s administrative separation of universities into several levels has further solidified the higher education stratification. He added that the government should prioritize providing more assistance to universities excluded from the elite group, rather than spending heavily to make the best universities even better.
Yuan Zhenguo told our reporter that competition between universities in China is unfair because leading universities will naturally be awarded more research programs, will attract more students, and will therefore receive more money.
He said the government should try not to be held hostage by university rankings or use them to allocate resources. “The role of the government is providing a level playing field where all kinds of schools can give full play to their potential and creativity,” he said.
Yang Dongping argued that the administrative evaluation of universities from top to bottom has brought nothing but new appraisal criteria, but for universities with different scales and specialties, the one-size-fits-all method can only ever have limited success. This kind of evaluation system, he added, has to be discarded in order to construct an education ecology where the government plays a minor role in academic assessment and administrative control.
“You don’t have to gauge how fast a plant grows every day,” he said. “Just wait for the flowers to bloom.”
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