Should you care about rankings?

One of our students asked whether they should look at world rankings or course rankings when choosing a university and we had a brilliant conversation about it in our WhatsApp group. A key contribution was by Houzair, a volunteer who recently graduated from the University of Birmingham in the UK, with a degree in philosophy:

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I was more interested in rankings in my field of study. While I did find “general” rankings like QS or THE useful, I found it more resourceful to look into specialist rankings. These tend to be rankings made by experts in that field of study. They offer their opinions on the department, quality of research, etc. I prefer these because they usually are rankings about a field by people in that field. For example, The Philosophy Gourmet report is a ranking published by actual philosophers/researchers on different, but not all, fields in Philosophy. 

Another thing is to talk to people in that field. That may not be easy to do if you’re not already in uni and in some academic circle though. It’s always insightful to hear an academic express themselves on a department/uni/research topic. These tend to be opinionated but I think that this subjectivity is where the magic lies. 

I also found it useful to look at the finances/budgets of the department in that uni. This may be helpful if you wanna be funded for your studies or for a research project. 

I also find it useful to look at who are the lecturers/researchers/fellows in that department. Is there someone there who specialises in something I like? So, what I’m trying to say is, I usually go for unis with the people that are best suited for my field and who I’d love to work with rather than overall rankings. 

Oh. A quick note. I’d also be careful about biases found in rankings. Social metrics and Indexes are not perfect by any means. Sometimes, you might spot some of these imperfections. For example, The Philosophy Gourmet Report I previously mentioned, had a bias towards English speaking departments. So, you’d find that most unis in their rankings were either American, British, Canadian or Australian. (kudos to them, they do acknowledge that and are planning to change this in the near future. At least the last time I checked).

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More on general world rankings 

Few people consider the factors behind general world rankings (like QS and Times Higher Education or THE) but if you know your priorities, it’s worth looking at whether the ranking’s factors align with your priorities. If the international student ratio in that university is important to you, then THE (for example) allows you to actually change the ranking according to this very precise measure. 

If you notice that no factor aligns with your priority, there is only one other reason for consulting world rankings: they may be indirect indications for your priorities. For example, there is a tendency (big emphasis on tendency) for highly ranked universities to provide good scholarships since they tend (again, emphasis on “tendency”) to have larger funds.