University Rankings, Diversity, and the New ... - Sense Publishers

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universities. According to Luhmann reputation can be seen as the “second selective
code” operating within the system of science that is helping to reduce the complexity
of the system. Reputation may become a social fact with regard to recruiting of
students and scientists and to funding decisions, too. Reputation is a form of social
capital within the system of higher education that can be transformed into economic
capital, too.
Analytically, reputation is conceived as the social ascription of high performance/
good quality to institutions by individuals. In analytic terms it must be distinguished
from performance. There are some examples of halo-effects that universities might
be considered among the best in a particular discipline that they do not have at all
because the institution as a whole has a high reputation. Empirical study shows that
there are considerable correlations between academic performance and reputation
within academic communities but linear correlation coefficients blur a number of
outliers – universities that are overestimated or underestimated in reputation with
regard to their actual performance.
As a social ascription reputation is highly dependent on the social context and
on social groups. Empirical evidence shows that reputation differs between different
groups of stakeholders (e.g. employers and academics); i.e. it is different for
different disciplines and fields of universities and, last but not least, reputation is
dependent on social networks and hence – even in global academic communities –
differing with regard to regional and national aspects. There is no reputation as
such, there is only reputation among a particular sample of people.
Those findings suggest that reputation indicators can be a valid information in
rankings – but only as an information on reputational hierarchies within defined
social groups, not as a measure of performance or quality. But validity of reputation
measures depends on clear information about the sample (reputation among whom?
reputation where?). A deconstruction of reputation myths of institutions is only
possible if a ranking gives the relevant information on reputation and at the same
time reputation can be contrasted by performance indicators. Calculating an overall
ranking score including both reputation and performance indicators inevitably blurs
the differentiation between performance and reputation. As rankings contribute to
the reputation of universities including the very information on reputation into
an overall score (with high weights in some instances, like, e.g., the THES World
Rankings) or even exclusively relying on reputation indicators means to construct a
circular argument. Using reputation indicators in such a way is to reify the social
construction of reputation.
NOTES
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2
First, the “Academic ranking of world universities” published by the Shanghai Jiaotong University
(first in 2003); see: http://ed.sjtu.edu.cn/ranking.htm; and second the “World University Rankings”
by the Times Higher Education Supplement, first published in 2004, see: http://www.thes.co.uk/
worldrankings/.
Currently there is some unverified information that the return rate in the most recent ranking was
only one percent!
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