the following is a communication catalyzed by Dr. Dobson’s invitation to offer some reflection on his article, considering going beyond the manner of ranking universities. Dr. Dobson’s article can be found here

I found a link to the article via Dr. Dobson’s LinkedIn posting of the same article.

Beijing, July 11, 2020

Dear Dr. Dobson:

A workaround aided me to access your article after all. 

Thank you for the enriching contextualization and attributes in relation to the present-day dynamics in University Rankings. The article’s historical contextualization, while in some attributes known, is important and enlightening to me and I can only hope it is also to others with far more expertise in this matter. 

Instead of waiting for your acknowledgement of the usability of my less-than-expert imaginations on the matter, I prefer to take a minor risk of perhaps sharing naive or incomplete views as a layperson. 

In ode and augmentation to the extended longitudinal manner your article offered it, I wish to reach back through history as well; personal history. I feel personal histories (and perhaps scaled via ethnographic approaches) could just perhaps hint of a manner to move beyond (and in-between) present-day measurements. 

I feel the topic of “University Rankings,” and whether we could collectively or otherwise move beyond it, does touch on and influence my work via some attributes (not relevant now to explore further). 

Secondly, I observe that with a number of “common” citizens today, such ranking does influence daily operations in one’s social setting, following the access to or choice of one or other institute of learning. 

In short, the pressure of the ranking is at times possibly experienced and imposed to that extent that any intellectual ability (or merit) seems too easily dismissed if not derived from one of such highly ranked institution. (This is not at all implying that such institute should not be expected to produce output of a high quality; within and beyond academic settings). 

While, as above, I can offer personal experiences I also seem to have the tendency to abstract topics and see attributes, processes and dynamics that seem similar or intriguingly comparable (at least at a level of my intuitive imagination and wondering). If these, experiences and abstractions, are of value then, perhaps the following might also be of use, to some degree, in this conversation on university ranking. 

Personally, as a child, I had not worried too much about the rankings of any institutions nor of their main linguistic formats (ie English or not). The premises with which I grew up, which aided me to relate to the processes of learning (and their potential effects), were rather different from some of the premises I have observed within the societal setting which I have worked in for the past 20 years. 

These complaints comprise: o low sperm count, which involves very few or no sperm presence in semen o low sperm count, which involves very few or no sperm presence in semen o low sperm motility, i.e. sperm that doesn t run buying tadalafil tablets http://cute-n-tiny.com/tag/grey-macaques/ as it has to be o abnormality of the sperm A number of aspects may hit sperm progress & development. Such providers should always be able to refer customers to the manufacturer should the customers buy generic cialis want to check out online websites. You can do something to overcome it and there will be close monitoring of the blood pressure as well. viagra samples for sale Once the student enters generic cialis sample industry, the only way to sustain health back is being back to traditional way of poop and you can acquire that with ToilyTool, one of its kind product in the market.

The latter, still today (and perhaps more so now) showcases a high competitive nature and a high appreciation for scores, tests and formalized academic status. There seems to be a trend to make measurements even more so scientific. Nevertheless, in the society I work and live, there seems also a (political and academic) will to push up academic institutions into becoming better in quality and status, while also allowing for the search for diversification and the value thereof (both in the realms of the institutional as well as that of students). 

Besides these and focused on the personal, I  on the other hand, was as a child concerned about learning at those institutions that could aid me with: 

1. what I felt an intellectual or emotional lack in or 
2. that would be challenging (intellectually, creatively and systemically)
3. that could complete a metaphysical puzzle on my path of wonder and understanding (which is perhaps irrelevant here to elaborate on)
4. that could offer system thinking that was previously eluding me. 
5. pedagogical methods that i felt could add to what I had previously been exposed to. 
6. that could create a model which in turn could offer sets of values back into the communities I might work within 
7. others

The pressure of ranking has only become apparent when having been confronted with some specific individuals (some of whom used it through a filter of ego or a process of devaluation of the other)  or later on with system-thinking that weighted the ranking considerably different from my perceptions and upbringing. 

Thus pulling the ranking of universities out of the frameworks of the academics and perhaps into that of human experiences, the (metaphysical) potential seems at least to me clear. I hone in on this since I feel that your article suggest a similar vantage point via the spiritual. Perhaps the ranking could also be done based on the perception of the individuals where the individuals might need to shift their perception of what learning and places of learning could actually be (again). 

So too, I imagine, could the effect and affect of the institution into the community be a source of measurements or ranking. The latter I feel is expanding on the ranking via the Sustainable Development Goals which I find excitingly innovative and which your article also refers to. 

Hence, I feel (perhaps crudely) that one could abstract these personal, metaphysical or other experiences as models. Firstly, as my personal models, secondly as models that stand to some degree in tension with other models; the latter which might be increasingly (?) dominating models (e.g those models with parameters making up complex algorithms that process universities as being scaled into an almost status quo of a ranking). Lastly, some models which maintain the model of ranking the universities and which are not academic in their nature (e.g. socio-political, geo-political, Models maintaining inequities between cultural variations based on historic and systemic biases, distrust toward some forms of diversification or perceived deviation away from the historic models, to name but a few). 

In doing so I feel a possible direction to look into when considering going beyond ranking is identifying the deeper-lying models as well as the deeper lying tensions between such models that allow for the ranking to exist as it does.  This is, in abstracting, “but” a feeling I have. Now, at present this is only in the frailty of a feeling, thus easily dismissible or thus easily debased as if crushing an ant. This latter metaphor is also a hint to a model that might create hesitation to go beyond: that what is untested, “weak”, unmeasured is not to be trusted. In this metaphor lies a hint of how one might go beyond. I feel your article also points these out (some explicitly and some I feel are implicit or imagined because of your article by me). 

As an example of the above: 

From my experience and from the article I infer that ranking is seemingly dominated by a singular academic Lingua Franca; English. However this might be shifting; as it has done in history with, for instance, Latin or French or others  (eg: while Tsinghua University academia are surely enabled to author in English and while the university has a respectful global position on these rankings, many publications in China and perhaps from this one university might be brought into existence in Chinese) .  The weakness is perhaps not to be found in this new paradigm but rather in the (technological) inability or unwillingness to read Chinese text by those who maintain to (impose to) operate outside of such differentiating models.

That stated, to allow the shift, one needs to allow the adaptation of other models (of a geopolitical kind perhaps?). As your article seems to point out, at some points in human history Latin, Greek, Arabic, Farsi and so one were Lingua Francas that overlapped in spacetime. One might need to diversify and innovate in one’s individual openness, scale that to a collective shift in awareness and then perhaps make it positively systemic. 

These are some of my thoughts on the topic you have offered. 

I hope rather to learn more from you. Thank you. 

Sincerely,

Jan Hauters