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So, a new world university ranking was launched yesterday. It is called 'the rankometer' (not joking!). The announcement was full of pearls of wisdom worthy of the @UWankings... Keep reading if you are in the mood for a thread/rant about university rankings (1/10)
They start by acknowledging the various rankings and their main issue βstudents, parents and employers simply donβt know where to look for a ππππππππ ππππππππππ of universities." But no worries, they are here to save us from drowning in this sea of information.
(3/10) So, "instead of comparing many different rankings, which all have their biases and a different focus, why not look at the aggregate figures in our Rankometer?β- Well of course! because I guess by aggregating them, bias gets eliminated instead of growing exponentially.
(4/10) You might wonder what kind of statistical trickery is behind this unbiased instrument? Well, their website ( https://appliedhe.com/rankometer-methodology/) is quite explanatory: "computations are similar to those of golf: universities with the lowest score πππ." (I wonder what the prize is??)
(5/10) It continues... "Rankings of a university in the diff. component rankings are added up, ordered from lowest to highest, and then assigned their Rankometer rank. Universities which do not appear in a ranking automatically receive 1001 points."
Which are those 'component rankings' being merged together into this 'one ranking to rank them all'? The usual suspects: ARWU, QS, THE, CWTS, Webometrics... Each being quite problematic on its own because as the Rankometer acknowledges, they have different methodologies and focus
(7/10) So, why, why, why??? Why put all of these together when the end result is only going to exacerbate the inequities carried by these already exclusionary instruments?
But as a disclaimer, my biggest disappointment with this ranking is that this company was recently established as a response to rankings! They started wanting to do university πππππππ that allow for "multiple top-rated institutions" as opposed to rankings' "zero-sum game"
(9/10) So, this news of the new 'rankometer' is frankly quite discouraging. I don't think this tool will get the attention that individual rankings get, but it is an example of neoliberal competition fighting to maintain the status quo instead of fighting it!
(10/10) I guess the takeaway is that not all innovation is good. In this case, I would've loved for this group of people to use their talent and experience towards something that truly attempts to fix these issues. But as an old poem goes "poderoso caballero es don Dinero"
