According to QS’ World University Rankings by Subject, released today, the University of Auckland is the best place in New Zealand at which to study English Literature, History, Linguistics, Modern Languages, Philosophy, Computer Science & Information Systems, Chemical Engineering, Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Mechnical Engineering, Biological Sciences, Medicine, Pharmacy and Pharmacology, Chemistry, Environmental Sciences, Geography, Materials Science, Mathematics, Accounting and Finance, Communication and Media Studies, Economics and Econometrics, Eduation, Politics and International Studies, Sociology, and Statistics. (Victoria law students, this should put a spring in your step from Wishbone to Mojo.)
Fortunately for those of you at Otago, Vic, Canterbury, Massey, Lincoln, Waikato or AUT, no one, not even employers, takes such a table as the last word on a university’s reputation, especially in a tertiary sector as relatively uniform as ours. According to QS’ findings released today, my decision to study towards English Lit and Media Studies at Vic was a real dud move – but I didn’t like Christchurch as a city; Otago was too cold and remote; no one at my Nelson high school went to Auckland; and my then-boyfriend was already at Vic. I doubt very much that many of my high school peers based their decisions on where to invest in their future on much more robust a methodology.
At Vic, every now and then, one of my fellow students would express regret that New Zealand didn’t have an Ivy League equivalent, a degree from which would be inherently more valuable and respected than the same qualification from another, lesser institution; where only Duxes, Proxime Accessits, and impeccably well-rounded individuals stood a chance of being accepted. (The implication being, of course, that they’d have been among them.)
But such a differentiated sector could spell real problems for ease of access to tertiary education in this country, which has already suffered a few blows in recent years (cuts to post-graduate students’ allowances; no increases to course-related costs or living costs). “I suppose being able to charge higher fees allows us to have fewer students, so your [staff-to-student] ratio’s better, but is that good for New Zealand?” asked Universities New Zealand’s Roy Crawford. “If there are fewer spaces available, New Zealand society might not be pleased with that.”
Since my own heady days at uni, the University of Auckland has emerged as something of a front-runner in the sector, in part because of its size (“We don’t have a big enough population” is a credible answer to the question, “Why doesn’t New Zealand have a Harvard?”, just as it is to “Why doesn’t New Zealand have a Guardian?” or “Why don’t we have an Ikea?”), and in part because of the validation it receives from global rankings that other stakeholders are quick to qualify. But I believe Roy Crawford, the Tertiary Education Minister Steven Joyce, and a number of vice-chancellors when they say that all of our universities are “world-class”. Even that QS subjects ranking found New Zealand to have seven institutions in the global top 200 [pdf] for at least one subject.
But the main point I took away from reporting for my feature was that though the rankings don’t paint a full picture of a university’s strengths or weaknesses, being as they are informed by quantifiable measures, it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be worried about our drop in them. As Stuart McCutcheon, vice-chancellor of the University of Auckland, told me, “To pretend that’s not a bad thing is to ignore the way that we use the rankings”; a lot of groups that bring value to the sector – like universities overseas looking to partner with institutions here, or international students looking to study in New Zealand – take them at face value, and for that reason no one can afford to dismiss them altogether. Whether or not Auckland is tangibly better than Otago, is tangibly better than Canterbury, is tangibly better than Victoria, becomes sort of irrelevant.
Phil Baty, editor of the Times Higher Education’s ranking, told me that New Zealand universities are very good at attracting international faculty members and students, and collaboration with institutions overseas, and that that puts them in a strong position “to capitalise on a rising Asia”. But when asked whether it was realistic or even fair to expect our universities to keep pace with those in South Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong and China, where Baty said “government investment has been exceptionally strong”, Baty said our policymakers had a decision to make.
“New Zealand has to make its own choices about how to support its universities – whether it wants to develop a strong national system or whether it wants to invest to ensure that at least a few leading institutions are globally competitive at the cutting edge of knowledge creation and top skills development. Having at least some global institutions as national flagships on a world stage can be very important when it comes to attracting top talent and inward investment. But the rankings data is there to inform debate about policy, not to drive that policy.”
Either way, it looks unlikely, if we keep doing what we’ve been doing, that our universities’ drop down the rankings will slow to a stop.
