Each year, thousands of universities around the world send vast amounts of data to international ranking and analytics companies. These figures – covering everything from student and staff numbers to income, partnerships and institutional policies – go on a journey that quickly becomes remarkably opaque.
On this journey, a straightforward statistic like the share of international students is transformed into an abstract indicator meant to capture how ‘international’ a university is. Yet how this transformation happens – and, perhaps more importantly, what other purposes these numbers ultimately serve – remains known only to a select few inside the ranking companies.
Transparency without reciprocity
We often talk about transparency in higher education, yet the private actors that are in the business of university data collection operate almost entirely in the dark. Universities are asked to submit data and take responsibility for their accuracy, but the organisations that process that data are under no obligation to show what happens next.
Their methodologies may be to some extent disclosed, but the actual transformations – the coding, scaling, rounding and discarding – remain hidden. The final scores cannot be reproduced. Consequently, no reliable conclusions about the performances of individual universities can be drawn. Meanwhile, universities and everyone else are told to trust the process.
That trust deserves scrutiny. We know that the moment data are submitted to a commercial ranking company, they become commercial assets; that the same data that underpin rankings also fuel a thriving market for comparative analytics, dashboards and consultancy services. It’s a paradox of sorts: universities buy access to detailed results based on the very data they supplied.
This dual role – both referee and coach – would raise eyebrows in any other field. Imagine that, in a game of football, the referee is also your coach. It’s untenable. And yet, universities seem to accept that arrangement. Why?
Of course, universities, or at least some of them, do benefit. They get visibility and prestige. Even if they don’t pay for services, they gain through narratives of excellence, good performance, contribution to the global sustainability agenda and impact that are created by these companies.
Universities, in turn, use these narratives for PR, marketing, advocacy, as supposed evidence of quality, competitiveness or what have you. The headlines, press releases and social media banners made for this purpose travel fast. Even institutions that insist they do not ‘care about rankings’ still mention them when the results are favourable.
Deeper cost
But there is a deeper cost. The same numbers that decorate university websites in many cases also inform policy and funding decisions. More generally, these numbers – trusted by many – shape how we view higher education. They tell us what we should value. They create aspirations and define success, but also failure.
Curiously, the authority of these metrics depends less on their accuracy and much more on how widely they circulate and how easily they can be turned into ‘evidence’. If a number makes you look good, who cares if it’s wrong?
Universities are thus caught in a peculiar position: they are both participants in and subjects of data systems that they not only cannot control, but are not even allowed to see. Their administrative data, gathered at public expense, feed into infrastructures that are proprietary and unaccountable.
Some observers call universities complicit, arguing that they should not bemoan rankings. When universities willingly supply the data and happily advertise their rankings, the argument goes, what right do they have to complain? Looking at it from this angle, universities are indeed complicit.
Universities have choices
But complicity also means power. Universities do have choices. They can engage passively, by submitting data because they think they have no choice. Or, they can engage strategically, by asking legitimate questions that go beyond technicalities, such as:
- What happens to our data once we submit them?
- What rights do we retain to see how they are used?
- How are the profits and insights of this data distributed?
These are not merely bureaucratic concerns. They go to the heart of university autonomy in the 21st century. Autonomy is no longer just about who appoints the rector or how curricula are approved; it is also about who controls the data that define what a university is in the eyes of the world.
Collective action is the key here. A single university can do little, but together institutions can demand reciprocal transparency, negotiate terms and establish common principles for data exchange. National university associations, rectors’ conferences and international university alliances already provide the spaces where such cooperation could start.
Germany, for instance, where institutional data officers regularly meet, discuss and even coordinate on these matters, offers a rare example of collective reflection and even action on the politics of rankings.
Universities could take this further. They could insist that any organisation collecting their data makes its processing rules fully auditable. They could advocate for open, interoperable infrastructures managed by public or academic consortia rather than private firms. And they could revive an older tradition of international comparison based on collaboration rather than competition.
It is worth remembering that universities were among the first institutions to share information across borders, long before global rankings existed. In the 20th century, they built international networks and archives to support recognition, exchange and mutual support – not league tables.
Somewhere along the way, that cooperative vision was replaced by a competitive one. But it does not have to be that way.
When universities fail to act, they risk being governed by numbers they did not design, in systems they cannot see. When they work together, they can start to reclaim those systems and make data serve universities and their public mission – not the other way around.
This post was originally published on University World News in the Commentary section
Photo credit: Markus Winkler on Unsplash
