Love them or hate them, world university rankings have become a major force with the rapid internationalisation of higher education and are likely to become ever more influential. As governments across the world make the establishment of world-leading universities a key national economic policy priority and pay increasing attention to the tables, Phil takes a stark look at the current rankings, highlighting their flaws and imperfections, and revealing some of the tricks and games played to manipulate the results. He will provide details of the major methodological and data collection changes being made by Times Higher Education to ensure that its world university rankings are established as the most robust, transparent and authoritative in the international higher education community.
Drawing on a range of examples and scenarios, Rebecca will show how the current international university ranking systems impact the setting up of cross-border teaching-led collaborations. She will argue that academic communities already have their own systems for the international evaluation of research (most notably peer review), and the aspect of collaborations which affects most students – teaching and learning – is much less well served by current ranking systems. She will suggest a move to produce more sophisticated and in-depth systems of rankings, such as the OECD’s AHELO (Assessment of Higher Education Learning Outcomes) project should aim to capture the kind of information that is central to those setting up international teaching collaborations. She will outline what kinds of criteria would be desirable in these contexts, and examine some of the delicate intercultural issues that cross-border comparisons of teaching and learning can bring.
Fabrice will argue that too often, esteem in higher education relates to research performance and undervalues teaching and learning. The OECD acknowledges the multi-dimensional nature of quality in higher education, and the feasibility study thus involves different kinds of activities and of stakeholders’ viewpoints –across cultures and languages- to explore the feasibility of directly measuring or indirectly capturing these various aspects. By focusing on AHELO, Fabrice will demonstrate how to better understand and evaluate the various dimensions of quality, access and success in higher education globally, in order to provide relevant information to higher education institutions, governments, and other stakeholders including students and employers.
