Will Barratt, Ph.D.
Professor of Higher Education Leadership Emeritus, Indiana State University, USA
Professor of Educational Leadership, Roi Et Rajabhat University, Thailand
Fulbright Global Scholar, Universiti Malaya, Malaysia
Background
I've been retired from full-time tenure-track work since 2015. Since retirement from my US university I was Professor of Educational Leadership at Roi Et Rajabhat University in Thailand, Fulbright Global Scholar at the Universiti Malaya, and have done numerous workshops on and off SE Asian campuses courtesy of Universities and of the US State Department. Many of these workshop topics were on research for publication since publication has become the primary measure for faculty and university success on many SE Asian campuses.
Global Rankings
I don't much like winter but there is little I can do about it. I don't like global university ranking systems, and they are a fact of life in global modern post-secondary education. Analysis reveals that there are two dominant factors in global rankings: 1) Money, in all its forms and functions. This should be no surprise to anyone. 2) Faculty publications in top-tier research journals. Now, this reliance on publications is where the whole false narrative of prestige (a dog whistle for social class and social status) comes in.
Money
This is not as simple as it appears since there are many types of money. Basically there is tuition income, state support, grants and contracts, and endowments.
- Tuition does not reflect the real cost to educate a student (therein lies a whole discussion of campus based financial aid, and what count as instructional costs).
- State support only applies to public post-secondary institutions. When state support decreases the cost to students goes up.
- Grants and contracts contain what is called overhead which goes to pay physical plant things like heat and light, and non tangible things like administrative support. On many campuses considered high prestige many faculty are supported by grant funds and are a profit center for the campus. Most often those faculty teach rarely or not at all.
- Finally, endowments are money in an investment portfolio owned by an organization independent from, yet allied with, the university. Endowment per student is an interesting figure for US Colleges and Universities.
Publications
There appears to be little published connection or correlation between research productivity and teaching effectiveness, and yet higher education leaders place greater emphasis on research productivity than on teaching effectiveness. Teaching effectiveness is related, according to published research, to student learning. The research exploring the correlation between faculty research productivity and student learning has shown a near zero correlation for decades (Hattie & Marsh, 2004; Feldman, 1987 ), and while these are older articles they are often cited, giving them high prestige.
Of the two, research and teaching (as some proxy for student learning), research is seen as more important in the global prestige rankings.
Faculty, around the world, are strongly encouraged by administrators to publish in "top-tier" journals. Top-tier means that the journal has a high rejection rate, just like top-tier colleges and universities maintain a high rejection rate. Higher publication rates by faculty mean higher global rankings. Faculty on-campus reward systems rely on the dubious figure of publications, or even better, publication impact, which is the number of times articles are referenced by other authors.
There are business organizations, basically textbook and journal publishers, who will index faculty publications and references for a cost. There is also Google Scholar that does a better job, for free, and free things have no prestige on campus.
While many administrators and education officials currently in power currently look to social media for measures of their own success, as measured by the number of followers or page views, this popularity contest has not extended into the narrative of publication in top-tier journals. This blog, for example, as of the date of writing this has about 420,000 page views. However this blog is not a peer-reviewed top tier journal. However many of my citations on Google Scholar reference this blog!
"What about student learning outcomes?" you ask. Shhhhhh! That is hard to measure, that is about popularity, that is about likability, that depends on students, etc., etc., etc..
Money is a simple way to measure social class. Educational attainment and occupational prestige are a simple way to measure social status. Number of publications in top-tier journals is a simple way to measure faculty research productivity. All are false hierarchies based on what a lot of people believe to be true.
tl;dr counting faculty publications is a silly way to rank university and faculty prestige.
Feldman, K. A. (1987). Research productivity and scholarly accomplishment of college teachers as related to their instructional effectiveness: A review and exploration. Research in higher education, 26(3), 227-298.
Hattie, J., & Marsh, H. W. (2004, March). One journey to unravel the relationship between research and teaching. In Research and teaching: Closing the divide? An International Colloquium (pp. 18-19).
