Institutional Legacy as a Context of the Implementation of International Rankings in the Russian Higher Education System

Western university model was transferred to Russia in the 18th century. The development of HEIs took its own unique direction serving the needs of the country, while the state has been dominating the HE sector. The chapter analyzes the interplay of market, state and informal mechanisms in the process of implementation of rankings. The institutional legacy underpinned the locally defined hierarchies of HEIs and disciplines, both explicit and implicit. The challenges that Russia meets on its way toward world university ranking are on the level of institutions and faculty, students and parents, and employers. As a conclusion, global rankings and local hierarchies have to be balanced in the HEIs structures to allow for a compromise between the demands of the global competition and the needs of the local communities.

Rising up the Ranks

The paper will cover all aspects of the change journey: engaging with relevant stakeholders, the recruitment and retention of high quality faculty members, the review and revision of the curriculum, improving the quality and quantity of research output and publications, developing centers of research excellence, raising the level of funding for both research and teaching, expanding the number of graduate students, developing an eminent visiting professors' program, the internationalization of the university, strengthening governance and administration and raising the international profile of the university. It will set out, in detail, the strategies and processes that were developed to realize the vision, as well as the challenges and problems encountered, and steps taken to address these challenges and problems. Mistakes were made along the way and the lessons that can be learnt for any university that aims to be involved in the ranking exercises.

Overcoming Size and Subject Bias in Rankings

Although it is impossible to distill the complexity of a university down to a single ranking position that represents the multiple missions of a university or the different stakeholders of ranking user, rankings are here to stay. It is essential that rankings publishers are clear about their objectives and use techniques to overcome bias. This paper discusses in detail some of the trends and bias found in data used in rankings and methods that can be used to overcome bias. It also discusses the motivations behind rankings and the influence of institution size on ranking outcome.

Do High Ranked Universities Have Better Graduate Employment Outcomes?

University rankings are increasingly used as a measure of quality and reputation. Institutional leaders are increasingly using the outcomes of ranking in marketing of university courses. Both the critics of ranking and those who support have different viewpoints. Institutions that are ranked high celebrate their achievement however limited research is known on how outcomes of ranking are used to reward academic staff. Likewise some institutions that are not ranked enjoy ongoing student demand with increased diversity of student population, and comparable graduate outcomes. Some research suggests that students consider ranking to determine their choice, however others have ruled out. This chapter reviews the literature on both sides of the argument about ranking and it then presents the graduate employment data related to Australian universities to find out if elite universities have better graduate employment outcomes compared other universities.

Role of University Rankings in the Context of Lack of Resources

In the contemporary context, educational sector faces many challenges which are reflected in specific institutional reactions. Rankings specific to higher education systems are a real phenomenon. Management teams at all levels understand differently the role of being active towards rankings – from a national support and institutional scope, to a lack of interest from both levels. Methodologies of different rankings are also different. In fact, participating in a ranking or another is something to be decided by the university management. The mission of this chapter is to reveal the role of rankings in the contemporary context of resource decreasing. Some answers will improve the decision-making process related to rankings, as well as to other institutional changes adopted in higher education institutions. The existence of rankings cannot be denied. Understanding the role of rankings is one of the most important premises for a correct strategic development of the higher education institutions.

The Impact of Scale and Scope on Global University Rankings

Economies of scale and scope are increasingly critical for universities operating in globally competitive higher education teaching, research and training markets. This is because the associated cost advantages could enable some institutions to increase their university rankings relatively easier. This chapter investigates the relationships between economies of scale (measured by the number of enrollments) and scope (measured by the number of teaching programs), research performance, and institutional reputation (measured by the ARWU and QS ranking scores). The results show that larger and more diverse institutions tend to have higher scores. However, when separated into public and private universities, the scale and scope effects are not so obvious between private universities and the ARWU ranking scores. Nevertheless, the chapter does identify a significant scope effect in the QS rankings for private institutions, implying that expanding research, teaching, and training programs may benefit these scores.

Citations, Open Access and University Rankings

The citation impact of research articles contributes to the assessment of the research performance of universities in some international university ranking systems either as the number of citations per paper, number of citations per faculty, total number of citations, number of highly cited papers or percentage of highly cited papers. Publishing research articles in Open Access (OA) journals has the potential for increasing the citation impact of research articles and in so doing improve an institutions position in university rankings. This chapter reviews the evidence for an increase in citations through publishing in Open Access publications.

The Origins of International Rankings

The chapter traces the development of international rankings of universities from their domestic predecessors in the United States and United Kingdom in particular. It soon became clear that different measures were required because of the scarcity of data collected on the same basis worldwide. This remains their overriding challenge, particularly where teaching quality is concerned. It is also why the best-read rankings – those published by QS, the Shanghai Rankings Consultancy and Times Higher Education – are based primarily on research quality. The process has become more sophisticated since the first international rankings appeared in 2003 and 2004, with a much wider variety of users than the early compilers expected, but they are unlikely ever to satisfy critics in the academic world.

Ranking World Universities

One of the recurrent criticisms levelled against rankings is that they are simplistic and reductionist. Yet, from the user perspective, this ‘simplicity' yields important advantages when rankings are contributing to decision-making. To encompass these two opposing views, QS has sought to maintain a critical and self-reflective stance, continuously concerned with methodological improvement to its portfolio of rankings and ratings, while striving to provide an accurate and practical representation of the complexity of higher education institutions worldwide. Over the last decade, such analysis, both critical and salutary, has resulted in key refinements in the QS Rankings methodology, including the introduction of new regional and subject-driven rankings. Our chapter sets out to explain how various aspects of institutional performance are conceptualised and measured in a practical and operational framework for rankings purposes, and how these measurements have evolved. Further issues, currently under investigation for the improvement of the QS Rankings and their indicators, are also addressed.

Analyzing the Disciplinary Focus of Universities

The phenomenon of rankings is intimately related with government interest in fiscalizing the research outputs of universities. New forms of managerialism have been introduced into the higher education system, leading to an increasing interest from funding bodies in developing external evaluation tools to allocate funds. Rankings rely heavily on bibliometric indicators. But, bibliometricians have been very critical with their use. Among other, they have pointed out the over-simplistic view rankings represent when analyzing the research output of universities, as they consider them as homogeneous ignoring disciplinary differences. Although many university rankings now include league tables by fields, reducing the complex framework of universities' research activity to a single dimension leads to poor judgment and decision making. This is partly because of the influence disciplinary specialization has on research evaluation. This chapter analyzes from a methodological perspective how rankings suppress disciplinary differences which are key factors to interpret correctly these rankings.