Focus on: Do international university rankings serve a useful purpose

For a few years now, international university rankings, such as the Times Higher Education (THE) World University Rankings, the QS World University Rankings, and the Shanghai Academic Ranking of World Universities, have been very influential in shaping university priorities and even government policy on higher education. But does the exercise of placing universities in a ranking order, like football teams in a league, make sense? Or would it be preferable to recognise, in the spirit of Simon Rattle's comment on orchestras, that higher education institutions all have different qualities. More...