Chasing vanity

As new global university rankings periodically come out, some among the leadership of higher education sector of the country find reasons to celebrate. The same happened last week. The performance of our institutions is nothing to be proud of. But that is not my point here. I want to reflect on the issue of ranking in and of itself. And what should we be assessing? Should we be interested in quality assurance and real improvement?

First, university rankings are increasingly being considered problematic. The for-profit parent companies that issue various rankings use criteria that relies heavily on 'reputation scores' - a vague, subjective metric that does not actually measure anything except perception or popularity. This means that an outstanding university that few people know about will never actually do well on that list. This beauty pageant-like approach is hardly how an institution of higher education should be assessed. Another major factor is citations per faculty, which means that institutions with a larger cohort of social science or humanities faculty will inevitably do worse than institutions with bigger science and engineering departments. Factors like 'international faculty ratio' will always penalise institutions in countries where fewer non-citizens work. Higher education scholars across the world have expressed deep concerns about how, as a result of these rankings, universities end up chasing metrics instead of actual institutional improvement and how these rankings become the actual goal. A growing number of institutions are boycotting rankings altogether.

Now let us turn our attention to what is not being measured. Teaching quality, student learning, mentorship, intellectual engagement, ability to formulate a problem, meaningful debates, understanding of complex topics, critical thinking or writing skills - none of these are included directly or indirectly in the metrics. A university that helps students from difficult socio-economic backgrounds, provides them with good counselling, helps them learn new material and gives them the opportunity to be meaningful citizens with a strong moral and ethical compass is not going to appear on the chart. At some point, one has to ask, what is a good university? Or perhaps an even more fundamental question, what is a university for?

This takes me to my final point - and that is about the vanity chasing enterprise that we seem to be stuck in. Few would disagree that Pakistani universities are facing serious challenges. The public sector investment is on a downward spiral. The university infrastructure is in a state of disrepair. There are serious concerns about plagiarism and routine violation of code of ethics. Quality of instruction varies widely and is often unsatisfactory. The labs and the libraries fail to inspire. Top leadership positions at most public sector universities often go to those who have the strongest political connections. A heavy-handed approach to curriculum has resulted in lack of imagination, critical thinking or serious intellectual engagement in the material. The list of topics that can be openly discussed on campus continues to shrink. What is therefore needed is not chasing some questionable metrics by a for-profit outside agency that has never visited with the faculty or students, spent time on our campuses and appreciated our challenges. There is nothing to celebrate if the ranking changes by a dozen places in the 400-range. The reason our universities are struggling is not because we have fewer citations per faculty, or limited international engagement. Even if we were to game the system and somehow improve our citations and jump a few places on the list, the most fundamental problems would remain intact. The stubborn problems of higher education are deeply rooted because we fail to recognise what is the value of a university in the society, and what is it supposed to do both for those who enter its gates as students, staff and teachers, and for those who benefit from that knowledge in the community at large.