John H Howard, 15 October 2024
It's Ranking Season Again!
University rankings have become something of an obsession, with institutions and nations fixated on where they stand in the latest league tables. Students and parents often provide an initial filter—"should I apply to this university or that"?
For governments and funders, rankings can shape policy decisions, with high-ranking universities seen as deserving more resources. League tables can also be a double-edged sword for universities: a signpost of success when rankings improve but a source of anxiety and scrutiny when they fall.
But here’s the problem: rankings, particularly the big global ones like Times Higher Education or QS World University Rankings, oversimplify complex institutions into a single score. This reductionism does a disservice to the true purpose of universities, which is multifaceted, nuanced, and context-dependent.
Chasing the top spots often leads universities into reactive, short-term behaviours, diverting attention from core priorities like student learning, faculty development, and long-term institutional sustainability. The real question is: how do we go beyond this game of leapfrog and turn rankings into something more useful?
Enter the concept of benchmarking—an approach grounded in using rankings data strategically to inform institutional development rather than as an end in itself.
This is about peeling away the shiny veneer of league tables and getting to the hard work of comparing management practices, improving institutional performance, and achieving long-term goals. It's less about competing and more about learning.
The Flawed Seduction of Rankings
University rankings, in their current form, have a well-documented list of issues which are generally well known––they’re heavily skewed towards research output, citation counts, and reputation surveys—factors that often favour the elite, research-intensive universities over those with strengths in teaching, access, or community engagement.
Rankings typically neglect the diversity of higher education missions, whether it’s teaching-focused institutions that prioritise student outcomes or regional universities that serve as economic and social anchors for their communities.
When rankings focus narrowly on a few indicators, institutions inevitably respond by reshuffling priorities to match those criteria, sometimes at the expense of their mission. For example, universities may rush to publish more research papers, but this can result in faculty being stretched thin and teaching quality suffering.
Similarly, the emphasis on international student recruitment to boost global outlook metrics can lead to neglect of local students and the erosion of domestic educational priorities. Universities that excel in delivering social mobility, or those with strengths in specific industries like health care, agriculture, or technology, often don't get the credit they deserve.
However, the most profound issue is how rankings feed into management practices. Incentive structures become misaligned, often pushing institutions towards actions that serve the league tables more than their own mission.
From Rankings to Benchmarking: A Strategic Pivot
Benchmarking, in contrast, is a far more useful process for improving institutional performance. It involves identifying appropriate peer institutions (locally or globally) and comparing performance across key metrics that align with an institution’s mission and objectives.
The aim is not to climb the league tables but to learn and adopt practices that improve institutional health in a sustainable, mission-driven way. To make this pivot, university leaders must take a few key steps.
Find Real Peers
One of the most important shifts is understanding who your real competitors are—or, better said, who your collaborators in learning could be. Global rankings compare Oxford with a regional university in Canada or Australia. This is neither meaningful nor productive.
A research-intensive university in a large metropolitan area should benchmark itself against other research-driven universities in similar urban settings with comparable student demographics and missions. On the other hand, an outer metropolitan or regional, teaching-focused university would get more out of comparing its performance with institutions of similar size and regional importance.
For example, an outer metropolitan or regional university in Australia should benchmark itself against similar universities that excel in teaching and community engagement, such as institutions in the U.S. or Europe serving provincial or regional populations.
The benchmarks would focus on student retention, local employment outcomes, and partnerships with regional industries.
Select Metrics that Matter
A key strength of benchmarking is the ability to zero in on metrics that truly reflect an institution’s mission. Instead of chasing everything that rankings value, universities can select what’s most important to them.
For a university focused on research, it might be about improving grant success rates or attracting top researchers. For others, it could be about student outcomes, teaching quality, or regional economic impact.
By contrast, a university focused on teaching and learning would focus on metrics like student satisfaction, employment rates after graduation, and the ability to attract diverse student cohorts. These are often undervalued in the major rankings, but they are precisely the metrics many institutions should focus on to fulfil their missions.
A university could benchmark itself against other institutions excelling in these areas and adopt best practices in curriculum design, student support, and employability initiatives.
Management Practices: Benchmarking for Better Leadership
In many ways, the real value of rankings comes down to how they can inform management practices. This is where benchmarking comes into its own. By analysing peer institutions' management and operational strategies that perform well, universities can lift their own practices.
For a university that struggles with student retention, benchmarking against institutions with high retention rates can uncover what those institutions are doing differently. Perhaps they offer better student support services, have stronger engagement with first-year students, or have more robust mental health and wellbeing initiatives.
Importantly, benchmarking is not a passive data comparison process but a proactive learning tool. It's about seeing what works elsewhere and adapting it to fit your own institution’s context.
Similarly, in research management, universities that struggle to attract competitive research funding might benchmark themselves against more successful institutions and discover that their competitors are investing more in early-career research development, offering more internal grant-writing workshops, or leveraging interdisciplinary research networks more effectively.
This discovery could lead to concrete changes in internal funding structures or the creation of new mentorship programs that better support researchers at different stages of their careers.
Long-term Planning Over Short-term Wins
Another crucial element of benchmarking is its capacity to support long-term planning.
Universities are complex institutions that take years to change direction. However, the temptation of rankings is to focus on short-term gains—publishing more papers, recruiting more international students, etc.—that may not contribute to sustainable growth or long-term success.
By using benchmarking data to inform strategic plans, universities can align their actions with long-term goals. For example, a university might decide it wants to improve its social impact. Benchmarking could identify institutions that have excelled in social engagement—perhaps through community-based research projects, outreach initiatives with underserved populations, or partnerships with local industries.
These insights could inform a long-term strategy that builds genuine impact rather than focusing on superficial changes aimed at boosting a single metric.
Consider an outer metropolitan university which serves a highly diverse student population and prioritises engagement with its local community. Its mission is not just to perform well on international rankings but to contribute to its region's economic, cultural, and social well-being.
Benchmarking could help identify peer institutions globally that have succeeded in aligning research and teaching with local needs, offering valuable insights into how Western Sydney University can continue to meet its own objectives.
Fostering a Culture of Continuous Improvement
Lastly, benchmarking isn’t just a tool for one-off comparisons. It should foster a culture of continuous improvement. Universities can build adaptive, forward-looking strategies by regularly comparing performance across key areas and learning from the best. This could mean incorporating regular internal audits, feedback loops, and a willingness to pivot when necessary.
For instance, an institution that benchmarks its student outcomes against global peers might discover that while it excels in attracting students, its graduation rates lag behind. Over time, this realisation could lead to deeper institutional changes, from more comprehensive student support systems to better academic advising. It’s about evolving—using data not as a means of external validation but as a mirror to reflect on internal strengths and weaknesses.
The Role of Policymakers in Benchmarking
Universities do not operate in isolation, and government policies often shape institutional behaviour. Here, policymakers can play a crucial role in encouraging benchmarking instead of blind adherence to rankings. Australia has one of the highest proportions of ranked universities in the world.
While participation in rankings can encourage a more competitive, globalised approach and drive international student recruitment, it risks distorting universities' missions and purpose, set out in their enabling legislation, in favour of externally driven criteria.
Governments could develop national frameworks that prioritise a diverse range of performance indicators, providing a more nuanced view of university success. For example, Australia’s Higher Education Standards Framework sets out quality standards for higher education providers; the framework could be used as a basis for more sophisticated national benchmarking exercises that recognise the sector's diversity.
By shifting the focus from rankings to benchmarking, policymakers can encourage universities to build on their strengths, fostering a more resilient, deeply engaged, and immersive higher education landscape.
Conclusion: Rankings as a Tool, Not the Goal
Rankings are here to stay. However, rather than fixating on league tables, universities and their leaders need to take a step back and consider how to use rankings data in a way that generates value.
The key is to move from a culture of competition to one of learning and improvement. Benchmarking offers a way to leverage rankings data to inform strategic decisions, improve management practices, and, most importantly, ensure that universities remain true to their missions.
Ultimately, rankings should be seen as one tool in a broader toolkit for institutional development. By focusing on benchmarking, universities can build strategies that lift performance in the short term and for the future—ensuring they are well-positioned to navigate the challenges and opportunities of an ever-changing higher education landscape.
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