How the QS World University Rankings reinforce elitism and caste bias

The metric used to measure the quality of institutions relies heavily on the competence and prominence of its researchers. In a country like India, where a majority of academics are upper-caste, the work of researchers from lower castes remains invisible

"In applying this to the context of India then, it is a question not only of elite institutions but of individual faculty members and their research, since at least 50 per cent weightage is provided to both the reputation and the citation value of each individual," writes Adya Goyal. (Express archive)

Written by: Adya Goyal

5 min readJul 4, 2023 10:18 AM IST First published on: Jun 30, 2023 at 04:31 PM IST

The QS World University Ranking 2024 was released on June 27. Nine out of the top ten spots were taken by universities from the US and Europe — the National University of Singapore (NUS) became the first Asian university to break into the top 10, at number eight. As for Indian institutions, after eight years, IIT-Bombay finally made the cut for the top 150 universities list, ranking at 149. This is being celebrated in India as a milestone for our education system. But what the narrative ignores is the fact that such lists do not purely rank institutions on merit — there is a considerable degree of bias involved, which leads to a perpetuation of the status quo. This is because the rankings provided are based majorly on the competence and prominence of their researchers. The ranking criteria comprise the following nine indicators: Academic Reputation (30 per cent), Employer Reputation (15 per cent), Faculty Student Ratio (10 per cent), Citations per Faculty (20 per cent), International Faculty Ratio (5 per cent), International Student Ratio (5 per cent), International Research Network (5 per cent), Employment Outcomes (5 per cent) and Sustainability (5 per cent).

In this article, the two I am concerned with are Academic Reputation and Citations per Faculty because they collectively make up 50 per cent of the total. The data for the former is collected via a survey distributed to thousands of global academics. It asks respondents to state their name, institution, job and number of years in the field. Then, researchers have to provide specific information about their subjects of expertise and the geographical regions they are most familiar with. Thereafter, they nominate “up to 10 institutions from their country/territory of knowledge that they think are producing the top research in their faculty area” and “up to 30 institutions outside of their country/territory of knowledge”. They are not allowed to name their own institutions.

Also read | Express View on QS ranking: Breaking through

The data for the Citations per Faculty indicator is collected by reviewing the value of the research produced by members of the institution.

In applying this to the context of India then, it is a question not only of elite institutions but of individual faculty members and their research, since at least 50 per cent weightage is provided to both the reputation and the citation value of each individual. At face value, this may seem like a fair data point to consider. But the question is: Who gets cited, who is prominent and who is considered an “expert”? That in itself depends on who is visible. Mulling this prompts a rethinking of the idea of these metrics.

Consider the caste-wise distribution of India’s population. According to most estimates, eighty per cent of the country comes from Scheduled Caste (SC), Scheduled Tribe (ST) or OBC communities while only about 20 per cent are “upper” caste. Yet, as per a report in Nature, 98 per cent of professors and 90 per cent of assistant or associate professors are from the “upper” castes in IISc, IIT Delhi, Bombay, Kanpur and Kharagpur. This reveals a jarring gap in representation. The knowledge base and perspective of only 20 per cent of the population occupies at least 90 per cent of the space in the field.

When we put this in the context of the survey, it is clear that if academics from IIT Bombay are responding to the Academic Reputation survey, they will most likely name peers from similar institutions that are conducting prominent research and are most widely cited. Unfortunately, that category includes only a marginal number of researchers from lower caste backgrounds, even if we go by the faculty demographic of the institutions mentioned above. Given that the percentage of professors from the Dalit Bahujan Adivasi (DBA) community is as little as two per cent in such spaces, where is the representation of their work? Where will their work be cited?

Also read | QS World University Rankings 2024: Decoding changes in ranking methodology and its impact on Indian varsities

Moreover, the number of citations is a strong indicator of legitimacy. This translates citations into material benefits such as promotions and salaries. And so if there is no representation, there will be even lesser engagement — ultimately depriving those less prominent of their citational value, regardless of the merit of their work. This system reinforces the same patterns, keeping the knowledge and experience of the majority in this country unexplored or invisible. In addition, it maintains the elitism of a field that is opaque and gatekeeps these spaces on the basis of the “merit” argument — which, in turn, is decided by the same people. The cyclical nature of this perpetuates the status quo and ensures that institutions remain ivory towers that are both inaccessible and unassailable. The QS World Ranking of institutions, then, is part of the structure that perpetuates global pedagogic inequalities.

adya.goyal@expressindia.com