Towards the end of every year things hot up in the corridors of British universities. Upon the brow of even the most dapper English vice-chancellor gleams a damp sheen caused by the anticipation of The Times Higher Education Supplement (THES) rankings for the year. Of course, academics all tease one another over cordials about the fallacious categorisations, but beneath the veneer of cynical bonhomie there dwells a serious competitiveness.
It’s not the fact that, once more, they will be found pallid and wanting by their American colleagues across the pond; the real competition is within England’s green and pleasant land. The fact is, ranking is taken seriously throughout the world.
The THES and Shanghai Jiao Tong University rankings are concrete ways in which higher education measures itself. For Cambridge to fall a few places is a real reason for concern and stirs porty debate among the echelons of the venerable college. Part of this is because a large element in the reputation of a top university is how the value of research is scored, especially by peers. Frankly, it’s really about boys in the schoolyard, but with serious consequences: it determines where parents want their children to go, it clandestinely directs state funding and it can easily rough up the prestige of any one university.
Thank heavens then that South African higher education is above such tedious ranking schemes. Well, not quite.
UCT figures on the Shanghai list, but is moribund in the mid-200s against the best in the world, a pimply self-conscious youth at the back of a vast class. The point is that our institutions are too scared to rank ourselves, even (and especially) among ourselves. And why? Because any ranking will show that apartheid is alive and kicking still and that the advantaged are even more advantaged now than they were in the grim days of student protests. Consider, for example, the institutions that were untouched largely by the mergers and you will get an idea of who could plan for a global future, who is thriving now.
That doesn’t mean that we still cannot embark upon a ranking of South African universities. We do in any case. There’s an annual ranking that establishes where graduates would like to work, there’s one that picks the best marketing strategy and website and there’s a recondite one that lists (and implicitly ranks) the research outputs of institutions.
I would like to suggest that we apply slightly different criteria and become fully aware of the inbuilt ideological bias. This would be of immeasurable help to parents and students alike when they come to making extremely important decisions about their futures.
In the same way that violence in the country is semantically reconstituted as a ‘perception”, that Zimbabwean refugees are portrayed as post-colonial day visitors dropping in for a sandwich in Musina before hopping back home before it gets dark, so too do we need to create an imaginative ranking system for higher education. Here are my suggestions for a future local ranking system.
Best in research — no, not the usual NRF-rated researchers, but those who are actually making useful (and often groundbreaking) discoveries that help those in abject poverty.
The best distance education university — no, not Unisa, but North-West because any one piece of inter-departmental correspondence has to travel 300km to reach the same department.
Best community outreach — please God, not RAG students fuelled on recreational drugs, harassing pedestrians and motorists once a year and trying to fob off stale jokes disguised as useful insights into student life. I hope, rather, for modest institutions in which academics take their knowledge and their students to share in the real life of their communities.
Best in teaching — not star academics indulging in egotistic exhibitionism, but, rather than part-time tutors who are paid appalling salaries and yet who over-prepare for their classes, those who care for each of their students and go out of their way to turn them on to the passion of the discipline. They not only sustain the university, but are also the best marketers for a life in academia.
Best vice-chancellor — not based on institutional achievement, the size of their cars or third-stream revenues, but on the individual’s ability to lead humbly and inspire all facets of the university towards a positive and attainable vision for the future.
This list is by no means exhaustive, but it gets closer to the reality of South African higher education. And — who knows — it might be a useful point of departure for a nuanced debate on differentiation.