The origin of the current university rankings can be found at the end of the 19th century in the United States when, in 1870, the Office of Education published the first academic rankings. However, it was not until a century later that the rankings began to acquire greater visibility and importance. In 1998, the German weekly Der Spiegel published a European ranking of universities, an initiative that was followed by the Italian newspaper La Repubblica and other academic institutions and media. In recent years, international rankings have become increasingly important as they are presented as a useful tool to measure the strengths and weaknesses of university systems and compare them with others.
There are currently multiple world rankings of universities such as the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU), the Times Higher Education (THE), the Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) and the U-Multirank, which assess training centers based on various parameters such as , for example, teaching and learning, the quality of teaching and teaching staff, scientific production, research, knowledge transfer, international orientation, their contribution to regional development or the employment of students after completing their studies .
In addition, specialized communication media in the business world such as the Financial Times, The Economist, Fortune, Business Week or El Mundo value the quality of teaching and the resources used by business schools through their own research, surveys in schools and through students and alumni.
As Teodoro Luque Martínez, professor at the University of Granada, indicates in “What are university ‘rankings’ for?” there is unanimity regarding the rankings is that they are imperfect”, and what must be kept in mind is that each ranking measures a parameter and the student must pay attention to the parameters that it values.
In general, the different classifications provide a vision of universities and university systems. However, it is only a view from within the global university system that must be put in context to take into account the environment of higher education institutions.
Professor Luque highlighted the need to be aware of the limitations of university rankings, that at best they constitute an imperfect approximation. “With its pros and cons, rankings are a tool that can be used. Those of us who use them are not subjects who have rights and obligations, and we should be cautious with their use and avoid abuse”, underlines the expert from the University of Granada.
In the end, everything is a matter of prestige that affects, on the one hand, the institution, which will be able to attract the best students, and on the other, the student body, which will increase the chances of being hired, since more companies, in seeing a good position in the ranking, they will look for their future workers there
