University ranking systems being rejected

Chasing the rankings can harm Africa’s higher education system

- SIOUX MCKENNA

THE Sorbonne University, founded in Paris in 1253 and known globally as a symbol of education, science and culture, has just announced that, starting in 2026, it will stop submitting data to Times Higher Education (THE) rankings.

It is joining a growing movement of universities questioning the value and methodology of these controversial league tables. Rankings companies add together various indices that purport to measure quality. The indices include research outputs, the results of reputation surveys, the amount of money they receive in research grants and donations, and how many Nobel prize winners they have ever employed. Nathalie Drach-Temam, president of the Sorbonne, stated that the data used to assess each university's performance is not open or transparent and the reproducibility of the results produced cannot be guaranteed.

This echoes wider concerns about the lack of scientific rigour of ranking systems that claim to measure complex institutional performance through simplified metrics. The problem is that the general public believe that the rankings offer an indication of quality. As a result rankings have enormous influence over the market. This includes the choice of where to study and where to invest funding. The university's decision aligns with its commitment to the Agreement on Reforming Research Assessment, an agreement signed by over 700 research organisations, funders and professional societies, and the Barcelona Declaration, signed by about 200 universities and research institutes. Both advocate for open science practices to make scientific research, data, methods, and educational resources transparent, accessible and reusable by everyone without barriers. And both recommend “avoiding the use of rankings of research organisations in research assessment”.