Seven of the Australian Group of Eight elite universities have said that they have boycotted the Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) Graduate Employability Rankings which are due to be announced next week at the latest QS-Apple in Melbourne.
A spokesman for the Group, reported in The Australian, said:
“All of these rankings have their place and we are very happy to participate in them,” Ms Thomson said.
"However, the integrity and robustness of the data is critical in ensuring an accurate picture and we have some concerns around some of the data QS requested, particularly as it relates to student details and industry partners. These go to the heart of issues around privacy and confidentiality.
“We were also concerned about transparency with the methodology — we need to know how it will be used before we hand over information. There is no doubt that there are challenges in establishing a ranking of this nature and we will be very happy to work with QS in refining its pilot.”
I am not QS's number one fan but I wonder just how much the Group of Eight are really bothered about transparency and confidentiality. Could it be that they are afraid that such rankings might reveal that they are not quite as good at some things as they think they are?
Earlier this year the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey reported that graduates of younger universities such as James Cook and Charles Darwin and some technological universities had higher incomes than those from the Group .
Spokespersons for the Group were not amused. They were "perplexed" and "disappointed" with the results which were "skewed" and "clearly anomalous".
The counterparts of the Group of Eight in the UK's Russell Group and the League of European Research Universities (LERU) have already shown that they do not like the U-Multirank rating tool, which the League considers a "serious threat to higher education".
Universities such as those in the Ivy League, the Group of Eight, LERU and the Russell Group have a bit of a problem. The do a lot of things, research, innovation, political indoctrination, sponsorship of sports teams, instruction in professional and scientific disciplines.
They also signal to employers that their graduates are sufficiently intelligent to do cognitively complex tasks. Now that A-levels and SATs have been dumbed down, curricular standards eroded, students admitted and faculty appointed and promoted for political and social reasons, an undergraduate degree from an elite institution means a lot less than it used to.
Still, organisations must survive and so the elite will continue to value rankings that count historical data like the Nobel awards, reputation, income and citations. They will be very uneasy about anything that probes too deeply into what they actually provide in return for bloated salaries and tuition fees.
3 comments:
Hi Richard,
The Go8 were not the only universities to opt out of these rankings which required the provision of private and commercially sensitive information. A complete response would have most certainly breached the Privacy Act in this country as well as a host of contracts with industry partners.
Cheers, Tony Sheil
Hi Richard, I reiterate Tony's views on this, we (ANU and others I spoke to in the Go8s) did give serious consideration to whether we could submit data for the new employability ranking. We had insurmountable concerns with the provision of confidential data. Even if we were to ignore those concerns (legally unadvisable) or just submit high level numbers without the detailed evidence, some of what was requested would not have been possible without a very significant workload commitment to collect the data. I believe QS did allow some Universities to submit without the detailed evidence, however this raises even more issues of the data integrity and therefore the validity of the results. We did raise all of these concerns with QS early on in this process. This ranking was a trial and we are happy to work with QS to refine the methodology to ensure it is realistic and defendable in the future.
Cheer Tracey
QS is the worst world ranking table and this is just their business. They even provides "consultation" for universities despite the conflict of interest.
We should never trust such a "ranking" table.
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