A major European union-funded project attempting to overcome the problems of validity and rigour in university rankings has fallen at the first hurdle, according to a paper published in end June. The European Commission has launched two new ranking projects, U-Map and U-Multirank, aimed at reflecting the diversity of universities.The paper, drawn up for the League of European Research Universities by Geoffrey Boulton, senior honorary professorial fellow in the School of Science and Engineering at the University of Edinburgh, says that both initiatives have serious defects.
University Rankings: Diversity, Excellence and the European Initiative concludes that the two projects, which map out the activities carried out by universities and rank them by their performance in those areas rather than via a single monotonic table, fail to tackle the problems they were created to solve.
Nevertheless, Boultons study welcomes the attempt to create U-Map as a description of diversity and supports the development of U-Multirank as a means of exploring its potential to mitigate the problems of other systems. Rankings have become the antithesis of the university ideal, he warns. Its about measuring a brand, like Gucci or Chanel. It almost paints universities as a fashion accessory.
Criticising the trend for ranking institutions as nonsensical and crude, he says: We dont have a very clear view of what ranking is for and what it tells us. If I started producing a paper in which my objectives were unclear and my proxies varied from the spurious to the highly hypothetical, then my paper simply wouldnt be accepted.
The Times Higher Education World University Rankings also come under fire for including a survey of academic reputation. Such approaches are most likely to reinforce existing, conventional stereotypes, the paper says.

(Excerpted and adapted from Times Higher Education)