It’s university ranking season again

By Leasa Weimer. It’s ranking season once again! Yet, somehow every year the hype around the rankings seems to grow quieter and quieter. Perhaps it is because the rankings, or league tables, have reached a point where there are not many extreme changes to the list of ‘best’ universities. University rankings are not new phenomena. In fact, they have actually been around for over 100 years. 
In 1910, an eminent psychologist by the name of James McKeen Cattell published the first academic ranking, American Men of Science. [i] This ranking focused on research reputation including ‘academic origin’ – ie where professors had studied. Subsequently, he ranked the leading academic institutions. And so began the rankings game.
A second era of rankings commenced in 1959 when research reputation factors began to dominate over academic origin.[ii] Rankings during this era were nationally based and some were even commercially produced, such as the US News & World report Best Colleges rankings. More...