Hostage to rankings

Reducing a complex, multi-faceted academic institution to a single number on a list has become increasingly fashionable. Rankings, done through subjective and opaque criteria, by newspapers, magazines and other organisations that, at best, have a superficial understanding of academic institutions and their operations are used by students and their parents to decide serious academic journeys. There is both ample research and sound arguments by education experts that point to a long list of fundamental flaws in rankings including how these rankings are often a beauty pageant of perception, how universities can manipulate their own statistics to go up on the ladder, and how student well-being, support and experience is disregarded in the criteria. It is no surprise that several universities have now decided that they will no longer share the data with newspapers and magazines that produce the rankings.

While the engagement of prospective students and their parents is often discussed in various opinion pieces, the reliance of rankings by scholarship giving agencies is something I had not known, or fully appreciated. This distressing realisation came last week.

I learned from a visiting scholar that HEC scholarships in several categories (e.g. their US-Pakistan Knowledge Corridor scholarships) can only be availed if one is admitted to universities ranked highly on a particular list. I went to the HEC website and confirmed this aspect of the eligibility criteria. The young scholar, who relayed his story, was interested in studying water systems with a focus on our region. However, the best programme for that particular field of study was at a university that fell just outside the arbitrary cut-off of the rankings, and hence he had to go to another university. He had to settle for something that was neither well suited for his interests, nor rigorous in its approach, simply because a ranking agency that knew nothing about programmes that had focused on our region said so.

When we reduce universities or even departments to a simple number on a list, we make many flawed assumptions. Among them is the assumption of uniformity and rejection of sub-specialties. For example, by giving a single score to a department, we assume that a highly ranked department of biomedical engineering (my area of research) would be excellent in biomaterials, synthetic biology, neuro-engineering, biomechanics and other domains of the discipline. Unfortunately, that assumption is as flawed as it is naïve. Anyone who is a faculty member in biomedical engineering would tell you that. There are dozens of departments in the country that excel in one area and may have no faculty in other areas of the field. A highly ranked department may not have any expertise in a particular sub-specialty, whereas a relatively lower ranked department may be the best place in the world in a particular sub-field. Similarly, there is no reason to assume that a highly ranked history department would be excellent in American history, eastern European history and Islamic history. Then there is this assumption that good departments, or good programmes, occur only in highly ranked universities. Once again, that argument would collapse at even the slightest scrutiny.

The fact that HEC relies on outside rankings to steer our scholars to particular institutions is deeply troubling. On the one end, it relies on lazy and flawed assumptions. On the other, it underscores its own inability to judge a programme and its merits. Most importantly, it deprives scholars to be in places that provide them with the intellectual environment best suited for their academic interests.

Pakistan needs scholars who are well-trained, think deeply and are able to create new knowledge through rigorous scholarship. Such scholarly pursuits require freedom, independence and trust. HEC funds for scholarship are negligible to begin with. They should not be held hostage to arbitrary criteria by an outside agency that has made university rankings its most profitable cash crop.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 12^th, 2024.

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