Can ranking contribute to the quality assurance of higher education? An examination of the Chinese Disciplinary Ranking

ABSTRACT

University rankings have become increasingly popular and have penetrated higher education globally. However, it is disputable whether rankings can contribute to the quality assurance of higher education institutions. The present study examined this issue by exploring the mechanism of rankings as an external force influencing university change. It investigated the case of the Chinese Disciplinary Ranking (CDR) and found that university behaviour changed to some extent in terms of resource allocation and internal policies. Priority was placed on areas that were more important for universities to obtain higher rankings. However, the contributions of those changes to quality assurance and improvement were not very evident at either the institutional or systemic levels. The analysis determined that the consequences of the CDR were the result of the interaction between higher education institutions and external ranking schemes. Rankings have inherent limitations as an external force in contributing to quality assurance in higher education.

Keywords:

• University ranking
• Chinese Disciplinary Ranking (CDR)
• university change
• quality assurance
• goal displacement

Acknowledgments

We sincerely appreciate the comments from Professor William Yat Wai Lo (Education University of Hong Kong), Professor Ye Liu (King’s College London) and two anonymous reviewers.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. The 985 Project began in 1998, and has sponsored 39 Chinese universities to build ‘world-class’ universities with advanced research outcomes and a high international reputation.

2. The Double World-Class Project was initiated in 2015 and aims at establishing world-class universities and world-class disciplines simultaneously. The latest lists of targeted institutions was released in 2017, consisting of 42 universities and 465 disciplines from 137 universities.

3. The catalogue covers 13 disciplines: Philosophy; Economics; Law; Education; Literature; History; Natural Science; Engineering; Agriculture; Medicine; Military Science; Management; and Art. They are categorised into 110 sub-disciplines, such as Chinese Literature, Foreign Literature, and Journalism and Communication in the Literature discipline and Applied Economics and Theoretical Economics in the Economics discipline.

Additional information

Funding

This research is funded by the Humanities and Social Sciences Youth Foundation of the Ministry of Education of China (18YJC880056).