Why does Western participate in global rankings?

For over twenty years, universities have been assessed, measured and tracked by an ever-expanding array of rankings agencies. While there has been a proliferation, the top three rankings agencies have maintained a leadership role, using a careful mix of consistency and innovation (Times Higher Education [THE]; Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) and Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU). Western principally uses the THE rankings to track its improvements in global esteem. In a welcome trend, THE and QS now measure sustainability and university impact more broadly.

Generally, rankings have an over-reliance on metrics associated with elite science, and together with the expanding array of rankings, this has provided source for critique. This is manifest in movements such as the 'More than Our Rankings' initiative, which has developed some useful principles for responsible rankings use.

In a world of transnational education, students and their families look for reliable indicators of University quality. This is to assist their costly and life changing investments. This includes PhD candidates.

International partners and their governments use rankings to inform their decisions about which universities to form relationships with. Talented academic staff look to rankings when making decisions about where to secure employment.

Government and Higher Education agencies, are looking for data driven mechanisms to track research, teaching and learning quality. The costs of peer review are burdensome, and the public return on investment for tracking and ranking purposes is hard to justify. The Final Report of the Australian University Accord calls for research evaluation (quality and impact) that is data driven, uses intelligent technologies, is less burdensome, and improves scrutiny of research integrity.

Since the launch of the 2015-2020 Strategic Plan (Securing Success), Western has included KPI targets from Global Rankings agencies. THE’s World University Ranking (WUR) is the preferred basic ranking for Western, and we also use THE’s Young University Ranking (universities aged under 50 years old). Since 2019 THE have published an Impact rankings, which measures University performance at delivering on the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This ranking is the pre-eminent Impact ranking due to its comprehensiveness (240+ data points); validity (operationalises the UN SDGs) and broad participation (1,705 universities from 115 countries in 2023).

The list of disciplines in the QS Subject Rankings better reflect the recognised disciplines in Australia and are sufficiently specific (rather than amalgamations of disciplines). Western therefore uses QS’ Subject Ranking system to set targets (currently to have 12 subjects ranked in the top 200).

Western takes the average result from the THE and QS WUR rankings to determine our claimed relative position (currently top 2%) in the world across all Higher Education institutions (the latter being the denominator).

Western believes in being transparent about why we use Global Rankings. We participate for the reasons outlined above: to provide our potential students with a measure on the University’s relative standing; to help us track our improving quality and esteem; and to encourage improvements and progress (such as in regards to social justice, sustainability and innovation).

Western does not participate in Global Rankings as end in itself, and they are not a driver of our behaviour. For example, Western’s credentials in sustainability are deep and long, and are underpinned by our founding articles of association. They are not a product of our participation in the THE Impact Rankings.

A responsible use of rankings should also acknowledge bias and promulgate a critical perspective of the rankings. The limits and biases of rankings need to be discussed with our stakeholders, including our students.

For example, many of the rankings use highly subjective and non-transparent opinion surveys. In these surveys academics around the world provide short lists of what they consider to be the best 10 or 20 universities in their discipline, which is then relied upon heavily in the scores and ranks for all universities across the worlds. They also rely upon very elite indicators, such as Nobel Prizes which are won by academics in only a small number of universities.

Western endeavours to make public as much of the data submitted to Global Rankings as possible. Also, Western uses accessible data sources to track, and to report to its stakeholders on, our performance. As a global citizen we provide briefings and mentoring on Global Rankings, especially our university partners from the majority south, with a focus on those in Asia and the Pacific.