Why Large Welfare States Should Use Different University Rankings

Rankings are very fashionable among politicians and policy experts. Universities are no exception to this. Yet they are very controversial, and there are endless fights about a ‘fair’ methodology. Recently, the German political science association even recommended its member institutions not to participate in the most important German ranking any longer

Indeed, loosers of these rankings often complain and maybe sometimes for good reasons. One option is not to produce rankings, but another option is to produce other rankings. I, for once, would love to see an international ranking of the average university in a country. I think this would make a big difference. The reason is that many countries, especially in Europe, but maybe also in Asia have social and political preferences for redistribution and the equalization of standards of living. These countries carefully avoid too much social and regional heterogeneity. Money flows from rich to poor individuals, from strong to weak regions. Under these circumstances, we should not expect universities to reach the top of international rankings. A fairer measure would be how good a university on average would do, compared to an average university in another country.

Currently there is not enough data to do this. But we can do some simple exercises with the available rankings. I choose the Times Higher Education Ranking for 2012-3 with detailed info for the top 200 and less detailed info for the next 200. From this I compute the country average of those universities listed. This gives a different view on who is top and who is not.

We all know that US universities dominate the top. But how do they do on average? If we use the detailed info for the top 200 we see that the US is not top any more but third (See table 1). China and Singapore rank 1 and 2 respectively. This seems exaggerated, and indeed it is. The problem is, we do not get information about the weakest universities, since they do not appear in the ranking. Stats people call this selection bias.

There is no way to avoid the problem, but we can at least extend the list to the top 400 universities (see table 2). If we look at the averages for the top 400 we see that the US is now fifth and Singapore is top (after all there are not that many universities in Singapore). China goes down the table. The Netherlands is now second. These are mock results. I am not saying that these are the real country rankings. But they illustrate the idea.

In more general we see that many European countries improve once we look at the averages of a larger number of universities. Countries that redistribute less go down in the ranking. Japan, Australia are extreme cases. There are important exceptions to this rule, such as Switzerland or Israel, not the most benevolent welfare state, but shooting up in the rankings. And yet, for countries in which the whole polity is built around avoiding excess inequality, it would be wise to focus on averages and not the champions.

 

 

Table 1: Countries Ranked by Average University’s Position in Top200

location	avg. university rank	country rank
China	49	1
Singapore	58	2
United States	86	3
Republic of Korea	90	4
Australia	93	5
Canada	93	6
Sweden	97	7
Japan	99	8
Switzerland	100	9
Netherlands	100	10
Hong Kong	102	11
Finland	109	12
United Kingdom	111	13
South Africa	113	14
France	116	15
Germany	122	16
Belgium	127	17
Denmark	132	18
Taiwan	134	19
Republic of Ireland	149	20
Brazil	158	21
New Zealand	161	22
Austria	162	23
Israel	163	24

 

 

 

 

Table 2 Countries Ranked by Average University’s Position in Top400

location	avg. university rank	country rank
Singapore	58	1
Netherlands	109	2
Switzerland	128	3
Republic of Korea	135	4
United States	155	5
Israel	163	6
Hong Kong	166	7
Sweden	182	8
United Kingdom	183	9
France	188	10
Canada	191	11
Germany	204	12
Belgium	207	13
Brazil	211	14
Denmark	212	15
Russian Federation	226	16
China	228	17
Japan	230	18
Australia	232	19
South Africa	248	20
Turkey	253	21
Norway	260	22
Iceland	263	23
Republic of Irel	265	24
Austria	269	25
Finland	280	26
New Zealand	282	27
Taiwan	291	28
India	292	29
Spain	299	30
Italy	315	31
Czech Republic	326	32
Greece	326	32
Iran	326	32
Saudi Arabia	326	32
Colombia	376	36
Estonia	376	36
Mexico	376	36
Poland	376	36
Portugal	376	36
Thailand	376	36

 

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