Which came first: the money or the rank?

Abstract

Global university rankings are provided by several organisations based on various criteria, most of which are, directly or indirectly, related to the wealth of the university. The main objective of this work was to examine the effect of money on rankings and vice versa. First, we examined the relationship between global university rankings and professors' salaries and found an asymptotic trend for all ranks of professors across the top 200 US universities, but no trend for the top Canadian universities. Second, we examined the relationship between global university rankings and university income and found a positive trend for UK and Canadian universities. Our results are consistent with the hypothesis that the funding (as well as autonomy and support of the state) of a university and its position in global rankings are related. We maintain that European universities in several countries will not make it into the top 100 list unless their autonomy and public funding are increased. Instead, the recent decrease in public funding of universities in many European countries, as a result of the economic crisis, threatens to push these institutions further down the ranking lists.KEY WORDS: University rankings · Income · Professor salary · Endowments · Funding Resale or republication not permitted without written consent of the publisherContribution to the Theme Section 'Global university rankings uncovered'

Global university rankings uncovered: introduction

“…Turner (2013) applies a new tool (Data Envelopment Analysis) to rankings and maintains that existing league tables do not take into account the cost of high-quality output, and are therefore not appropriate for the present period of adverse economic conditions where value-formoney rankings would certainly be more appropriate. Tsikliras et al (2014, this Theme Section) examine the relationship of global university rankings with professorial salaries and university income, and extrapolate the findings to various European universities. They conclude that funding, autonomy and support by the parent state of a university is important for its position in rankings, and discuss the fate of European universities in several countries in relation to the recent economic crisis.…”