QS 2023 University Rankings were announced a few months ago . Close on its heels came the Times Higher Education (THE) 2023 rankings. All such rankings dominate media space for a while and there' a buzz all around about who's where in "the race" 🙂. I enjoy this spectacle as much as anyone else but let's just lean back for a moment and consolidate our thoughts 🙂:
While I strongly support increased investments in research and creation of conditions that allow teaching and research to thrive on equal footing, for whatever its worth, here's a somewhat cautionary point of view that I think is worth bearing in mind as we analyze any ranking:
To start with, let's agree that our goal is respect. We want the international academic community to respect our academia, to read our papers with attention, to look forward to what our speakers have to say at conferences and to visit us and engage with us as colleagues.
Chasing rankings in itself does not guarantee this. I say this for two reasons:
1. As far as research goes, respect comes from solving important, pressing, deep problems and publishing results that make a significant contribution towards evolving a field and bringing clarity. When such a paper gets written, people everywhere take note: MIT, Caltech, Princeton, Purdue, Stanford, Etc Etc.
Rankings are based on quantitative metrics. Give these metrics any more attention than absolutely necessary and they actually start distracting from the above. One starts shooting for short term goals, low hanging fruit, "quick productivity" problems - and that brings no-respect-whatsoever-from-anyone.
Note that I'm in favor of our researchers publishing globally, but our papers have to meet high standards and obsessing about rankings beyond a point can become a distraction.
2. To the best of my understanding, almost no ranking system anywhere today gives due attention to the quality of teaching and theses guidance at universities. And that's just laughable! Of course faculty members need to stay research active and teaching loads need to be kept reasonable to enable that - but that said, universities exist first and foremost to educate, to guide, to enlighten. That's the very raison d'etre of their existence. Then anything else.
I came back to India in 2006 and honestly don't know how much universities around the world today emphasize quality teaching and theses guidance. But I know for a fact that many Indian universities today shortchange their students on this front so that professors can push quantitative metrics further.
This is plain unethical. Not only is this cheating the students of quality education that they are paying for (some with great difficulty), it underprepares them for careers in a madly competitive world as well as hampers our country's development since the workforce is not up to the mark.
Should we be globally competitive?
Of course!
Is that going to come from blindly chasing rankings?
No.
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