Ranking University Departments: Problems and Opportunities
| Author | Geraint Johnes |
| DOI | 10.1111/j.1467-9256.1989.tb00253.x |
| Published date | 01 October 1989 |
| Date | 01 October 1989 |
Politics
(1
989)
(9)2
16-22
RANKING
UNIVERSITY DEPARTMENTS:
PROBLEMS
AND
OPPORTUNITIES
Geraint
Johnes
RECENT
TRENDS
in government policy towards higher education in Britain have widely been
interpreted as a reaction to the rapid expansion which followed the
1963
Robbins Report
(Moore,
1987).
The financial squeeze imposed on universities by the present government
during the
1980s
has, however, been consistent with the restrictions imposed elsewhere in the
public sector. The cuts of
1981
can be understood in terms of the need to reduce overall
government spending
so
as to reduce monetary
growth
and hence curb innation. The second
round of cuts, in
1986,
is more! closely related to the government’s view that the frontiers
of
the
public sector should
be
rolled back; higher education policy in
the
second half
of
the eighties
has therefore borne a resemblance to the privatization movement. In his
1989
Lancaster
speech, Kenneth Baker
(Secremy
of State for Education) heralded a further period of
improved student access to higher education, but at the same time made it clear that the
burden of financing the system will
be
gradually transferred away from the state.
Public expenditure on higher education currently amounts to
f4.4
billion per annum.
Some
f
1.7
billion of this is spent directly on the universities. In the present political context,
‘value for money’ and ‘efficiency’ have become major goals. Efficiency is achieved where,
given a constant set of inputs into the system, output is maximized. The drive towards greater
efficiency is, of course, to
be
welcomed. Inevitably part of that drive involves an attempt to
measure the success of various parts of the university system. Questions of resource allocation
always come to the fore during periods of major expansion or contraction. While in the past
this was in the absence of detailed information about the performance of individual institu-
tions and departments, the tools of analysis
are
by
now in place to provide such information.
The link between performance indicators and resource allocation has been forged.
All this makes
it
doubly important that attempts to construct league tables
of
university
performance
are
competently conducted. For many years, Michael Dixon has been publish-
ing rankings of universities based on graduate employability (for example, Dixon,
1982).
Such
measures provided some amusement in the
197Os,
but few observers took them seriously. As
Johnes
ct
aL
(1987)
have shown, rankings of this kind are determined mainly by subject mix.
More recently, Dixon
(1
989)
has published league tables based on student non-completion
(‘wastage’) rates. These measures, too, can be misleading, since a number of factors other than
university quality
-
subject mix, course length, propensity of students to live at home
-
can
affect student attrition.
A
little knowledge is clearly a dangerous thing
-
especially
if
it is
accompanied by a lot of cash. If Michael Dixon’s league tables do indeed simply reflect inter
university differences in subject mix, then
they
are
at best useless as a decision-making tool
but may still influence the decision-maker, consciously or subconsciously.
Of
course, the number and scope of performance indicators has increased substantially
during the present decade. Apart from Dixon’s employability indicators, measures based on
unit costs, degree results, student attrition (or wastage), staff publications and citations, and
the ability to attract external funding are easily obtainable. In
1986
the University Grants
Committee published a set
of
department rankings based largely on peer review.
These
have
already substantially affected funding decisions, as well
as
other aspects of university life (such
as the ability of departments to attract good quality staft). In addition a number
of
recently
published bibliometric studies provide quantitative measures of research output in university
departments, notably Gillett
(1987),
Lloyd
(1987),
Rogers and Scratcherd
(1986),
Lamb
(1986),
Johnes
(1987; 1988a),
Davis
(1986)
and Crewe
(1988).
These build on the methodology
developed by, amongst others, Meltzer
(1949),
Mans
(1951)
and Garfield
(1964; 1970).
More
recently, and on the European side of the Atlantic, Martin and Irvine
(1983)
have enthusias-
tically supported these techniques but, these
two
‘SPRU
gurus’ apart, most contemporary
16
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