For the first time, sustainability has been used as an indicator in the QS World University Rankings. The makers of the rankings have examined, for example, whether universities contribute to the UN’s seventeen Sustainable Development Goals. These goals don’t just target climate change, but also such things as social equality and the fight against poverty. The sustainability score counts for 5 percent of a university’s total.

On the subject of sustainability, by the way, TU/e scored only 18 out of 100 points. Spokesman Ivo Jongsma explains TU/e's low score on this topic as follows: "TU/e did not provide data for the sustainability indicator due to the large amount of data requested. We are considering doing so for the next editions because the low ranking does not do justice to the very high value we attach to sustainability and our exceptional efforts in this area." In this regard, Jongsma also refers to TU/e's rise in the SustainaBul rankings.

Reputation

The primary metric for the rankings remains the reputation of a university among academic researchers and employers, but the balance has been altered. Academic reputation is now given slightly less weight (not 40 but 30 percent), while employer reputation gets slightly more weight (15 percent instead of 10 percent).

Other criteria include the internationalisation of academic staff and students; citation scores for academic articles; the ratio of students to faculty; and how students perform on the job market.

Little has changed at the top. For the twelfth time, the American MIT came in first, with the British University of Cambridge in second place, just like last year. Oxford won bronze, followed by the American universities Harvard and Stanford.

The Netherlands

Yet almost all Dutch universities climbed up a few places. This year Delft University of Technology made its way into the top 50, finishing at number 47. The University of Amsterdam ranked 53rd.

Six other Dutch universities landed somewhere between 100 and 200 in the rankings. This was the case with Wageningen, the only one of them to have lost ground: the green university slid from the rank of 124 to 151.

Criticism

There are other world rankings in circulation, such as the Shanghai Ranking and the Times Higher Education Rankings. They all take a somewhat different approach. The main criticism of these rankings is that they create their own reality. But just how big are the differences between them? And why is academic research that gets published in international journals considered the gold standard, as opposed to something like research into the earthquakes in Groningen?

What’s worse is that institutions sometimes pursue dubious policies in order to move up in the rankings. A university in Saudi Arabia paid academic researchers to say that they worked there so that their reputations would boost that university’s score.

It’s also not always possible to trace how points are awarded. For example, Delft University of Technology scored 98 out of 100 points for sustainability, while Eindhoven, as mentioned before, got a meagre 18.

That’s why we often hear calls to ignore these rankings. At the same time, others warn that these rankings do nonetheless tell us something about the admirable position of Dutch universities in the world.

Of two minds

The association Universities of The Netherlands clearly articulates the position of being in two minds. Their webpage on the rankings gives a succinct summary of the criticism: “A ranking sketches an incomplete image of reality. The particular power of higher education institutions is far and away their mutual diversity. The pitfall of rankings is that they sketch a global image that does not do justice to the complexity of what is being measured.”

“Nonetheless, an external benchmark can be a valuable instrument”, the association adds. “It is, however, important to remember that no single ranking is completely objective. Ultimately, a ranking is the sum total of the many subjective choices made by the compilers.”