CONNECT: It's termed 'globalisation' but 'gullible-isation' seems closer to the truth, writes Eddie Holt.
At a time of year when media make odd lists - top ten Santa impersonators, top ten designer handbags, top ten 'executive' gizmos - none has been as insidious as those that 'rank' universities worldwide. Purporting to be consumer guides for the globalisation era, these efforts seek to gullible-ise the public.
They have, of course, the inherent fascination of a league table or, if you'll excuse an anachronism, the hit parade. Pop radio stations frequently fill bank holiday weekends with variations of 'All-Time Top 100 Singles' and DJs treat the 'countdown' with ponderous and contrived reverence. All propagandists know the ruse but such lists are always ideology dressed up as expertise.
Consider two lists prominently featured in Irish media: those compiled by China's Jiao Tong University and the Times Higher Education Supplement (THES). This year, Trinity College was the only university of this state's seven to feature in the 'Top 300' on both lists. Jiao Tong ranked it 261st and the THES installed it at number 87. That's a discrepancy of a mere 174 places.
The laughable aspect of it all is that a discrepancy of 174 places is undoubtedly well inside the margin of error for lists ranking universities worldwide. Such commitment to academic rigour is impressive, don't you think? Clearly, all aspects of university life have been measured - indeed, minutely calibrated - to produce such an infinitesimal divergence. Wonderful thing, accuracy! Of course, there are always pedants who'll quibble over a mere 300 per cent discrepancy. Even though one ranking is three times better than the other, only an anal-retentive could cavil over such a trifling difference. Anyway, Irish colleges have ranked poorly in recent lists - maybe they deserve to, maybe not - but Irish media have been alarmingly uncritical of others' criteria.
"Quite amazingly, it [the Jiao Tong ranking] has been cited ad nauseam as a definitive judgment on Irish universities by policy makers and newspapers," Professor Kathleen Lynch of UCD's Equality Studies Centre told a Higher Education Authority (HEA) conference in Kilkenny earlier this month. "Jiao Tong University in Shanghai is fundamentally a technological university." Its 'rankings' are based on criteria, which, as Kathleen Lynch has pointed out, "ignore the arts, humanities and much of the human sciences". Only published articles count which means that all books are excluded. You might be the next Shakespeare but you don't count beside the white-coated nerd who has written up fascinating research into the mating rituals of dung beetles.
The Jiao Tong criteria for 2004 are the number of Nobel laureates among (a) alumni and (b) staff (Nobel prizes in literature and peace are, of course, excluded); articles published in the journals Nature and Science and highly cited researchers in science and technology areas. Nonetheless, Trinity Provost John Hegarty cited Jiao Tong's rankings in his address to the student union.
He cited them in support of his plan to restructure the college. The fact that they don't adequately assess what Trinity, or any other Irish university does, is a peculiar form of academic rigour. Yet, as Kathleen Lynch also told the HEA conference, there is a "silence" in Irish academia about all of this. "The 'good' academic," she added, "is encouraged to become increasingly silent." If so, self-censorship - the kind of thing that prevailed among too many RTÉ journalists throughout the Troubles and nowadays can be found in non-unionised workplaces - is also gripping academics. Journalists' uncritical acceptance of daft ranking lists for universities is worrying but even more alarming is the largely uncritical acceptance - with notable exceptions - among academics.
Still, in the 'marketplace' for Irish education, there's pressure from 'consumers' (sorry!) for league tables. Primary, secondary and tertiary schools and colleges are to be 'ranked' and it appears that any old criteria are admissible. What we get is a culture in which brutal (in every sense) calculation and measurement displace cultivation and compassion.
The lesson from all these 'rankings as consumer guides' and their unsound methods is that a new brutalism is taking over education. Certainly, people should be free to seek what they consider best for themselves and their children but recognition of the difference between abject PR and reliable information would help. The 'market' after all, thrives on, indeed requires, gullibility.
It seeks to colonise culture in order to colonise minds. The Skilbeck report of 2002 and this year's OECD and WAG proposals were gross examples of a pro-business ideology contaminating expertise. Certainly, a pro-business underpinning of education has as much right to be heard as any criticism of such an enterprise. It has however, also a duty not to pretend it's politically neutral.
Yet in that regard it's been deceitful. It's sometimes said that if you think education is expensive you should try ignorance. Well, believe ranking lists and you'll be on your way. Happy Christmas, Yoko - but war isn't over. It is though, well underway and we'll return to Irish educational developments - especially the slippery Government's cute hoorism in all of this - in the New Year.