Rectors¡¯ conferences representing six European higher education sectors have agreed to work on a joint position on university rankings, as their umbrella body drafts an accompanying set of guidelines.

The informal alliance came together after a meeting of the European University Association¡¯s (EUA) governing council on 19 April in Gda¨½sk on Poland¡¯s Baltic coast.

Representatives for France, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, Poland and the UK agreed to assemble a group of experts and rectors to ¡°come up with a common line¡± on university rankings, according to Pieter Duisenberg, the president of the Association of Universities of the Netherlands.

¡°We discussed the, let¡¯s say uncomfortable, relation that universities have with rankings,¡± he told a panel session on the topic at the EUA annual conference the?following day. ¡°We concluded from that discussion that if we wanted to change our approach to rankings, that we had to do that together.¡±

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Mr Duisenberg invited other national rectors¡¯ conferences to join the ¡°movement¡±. Responding to the invite, EUA president Michael Murphy said the umbrella body was developing its own guidelines on ¡°appropriate use of rankings and appropriate engagement with the rankings systems¡±.

¡°It is very welcome that your initiative is taking place, as we need national experiences and the diversity of Europe to be brought to bear on the exercise,¡± he told Mr Duisenberg, adding that the guidelines would come out by the end of 2023. The parallel efforts were announced at the end of a critical session on rankings, in which panellists discussed the merits of a potential rankings boycott.

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Elizabeth Gadd, a research policy manager at Loughborough University and chair of the research evaluation group for INORMS, an umbrella for research management bodies, said a boycott would ¡°achieve a headline but it probably wouldn¡¯t achieve much more than that¡±.

¡°What we really want is obsolescence, not destruction of the rankings,¡± she said, after suggesting it would be ¡°tantamount to financial and reputational suicide¡± for universities to boycott rankings, but that league tables were ¡°ultimately an offence to our intellectual integrity¡±. She said academics and students?should ¡°demand as consumers¡± more transparency over rankings¡¯ margins of error.

The well-attended session opened with video pitches from ³ÉÈËVRÊÓƵ¡¯s chief global affairs officer, Phil Baty, and Gero Federkeil, head of international rankings at the Centre for ³ÉÈËVRÊÓƵ thinktank and managing director of the U-Multirank system.

Mr Baty said THE¡¯s impact rankings, which are tied to the United Nations¡¯ Sustainable Development Goals, had ¡°redefined excellence¡± in higher education, whereas Mr Federkeil emphasised the ¡°multiple excellencies¡± of his system.

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¡°We need to ask whether redefining excellence in higher education is the job of unappointed?third parties that are themselves unaccountable,¡± said Dr Gadd.

She said the ¡°more than our rank¡± initiative, which Loughborough was an early adopter of, was ¡°a narrative CV for universities¡±, referring to the shift towards more qualitative evaluation of individual academics.

Speaking on the panel, Vincent Blondel, rector of the University of Louvain and a newly elected EUA board member, said his university had ¡°never made any decision¡± based on rankings, while Joan Gu¨¤rdia Olmos, rector of the University of Barcelona, said league tables were of little interest to his community beyond an ¡°excuse¡± to do more internal analysis of performance data.

Speaking to THE, Mr Duisenberg said he was happy so many rectors¡¯ conferences had shown an interest in collective action. ¡°We love the rankings, and we hate them,¡± he said.

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Most of the audience at the Gda¨½sk University of Technology raised their hands when asked by Professor Murphy if they would welcome guidelines on rankings, although less than a tenth said they would act on them if guidance went against their financial interests.

ben.upton@timeshighereduation.com