The 2nd Leiden University International Symposium on Ranking was held at the Kamerlingh Onnes Building at Leiden University on 2 and 3 February 2007.
2 N D L E I D E N U N I V E R S I T Y I N T E R N AT I O N A L S Y M P O S I U M RANKING
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Ranking is here to stay
by Robert Coelen
here were about 200 participants who came from 34 different countries. This symposium was a follow up of the previous effort held almost one year earlier in the same building. The conference participants were all provided with the recently released book on global ranking entitled The World-Class University and Ranking: Aiming Beyond Status.1
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case studies clearly showed their institution’s commitment to excellence and detailed how they went about building their version of a world class institution.
Significant messages
In summary, the conference provided the participants with a number of significant messages: • Ranking is here to stay and will not go away, not even for a while. That is to say, universities need to deal with the impact of ranking since the ranking is out there and accessible to the general public. It is clear from the papers presented at the conference that the ranking is having an impact on the recruitment of excellent students. • It was also evident that the conference found ranking presently to be less than optimal. Choice of metrics, discipline bias, and systems of ‘expert surveys’ seen as peer review received substantial criticism to the point of making global ranking at least in serious need of overhaul and at most a complete re-think. The flaws that were seen in the current systems of ranking contributed to the problems facing universities in pursuit of attracting excellence. • New work is being done on the metrics that could be employed in ranking, thereby providing hope for better ranking systems in the future. Particularly one can think of ranking not only by discipline but also by different aspects of performance, ie ranking with different types of performance indicators which are derived from the same set of basic data. • The Berlin Principles were a good starting point for assessing the current ranking efforts, but they would need further development to crystallise clear performance indicators
Conference sessions
The conference was divided into three parts. A Friday morning session, chaired by Dr Jan Sadlak, in which the audience was given an update on the ranking systems by several speakers including Martin Ince from the Times Higher Education Supplement, Dr Gero Federkeil from CHE (Centre for Higher Education Development), and Bob Morse, the Director of Data Research at the US News and World Report. This was followed by a session, chaired by Prof Detleff MuellerBoeling, which considered the phenomenon of global ranking, looked in detail at some ranking metrics (Prof Ton van Raan), considered the development of a European Ranking Project (Prof Marijk van der Wende), provided some insight into the ontogeny of a higher education institute classification system in Europe (Prof Frans van Vught), discussed the Berlin Principles of Ranking (Dr Jamie Merisotis), and provided some food for thought on the dilemmas posed by ranking in the face of trying to position one’s university (Dr Robert Coelen). Saturday morning’s session chaired by Prof Guido Langouche, was given over to two case studies of development of world class universities (Prof Alan Gilbert of the University of Manchester and Prof Frank Larkins of the University of Melbourne), and an overview of national and institutional responses to the ranking (Prof Ellen Hazelkorn). The presenters of the
and other measurements by which ranking systems could be evaluated. The composition of the current International Ranking Experts Group (IREG) would need some changes to ensure that the dialogue with the those producing the rankings remained open, but that the process of evaluating ranking systems would need to be done without involvement of those being ranked to ensure greater credibility. Details of the Berlin Principles can be found at: www.ihep.com/Organization/Press/ Berlin_Principles_Release.pdf.
Presentations
The details of the presentations can be found at www.leiden.edu/rankings. It is the intention of Leiden University to organise another symposium on this and related topics in February of 2009. In the meantime, for those who are interested in this topic, Shanghai Jiao Tong University is organising the 2nd International Conference on World Class Universities from 28 October 28 to 3 November 2007. Details can be found at ed.sjtu.edu.cn/meetings.htm. The IREG group will meet in conjunction with this conference. 1 Editors Jan Sadlak and Liu Nian Cai, published by CEPES, Bucharest (2007). ISBN: 92 9069 184 0 378. Further details can be found at www.cepes.ro/ publications/recent.htm. Robert Coelen is Vice President International at Leiden University, and a directly elected member of the EAIE Executive Board www.leiden.edu/rankings
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