TheJakartaPost
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
Defining excellence in higher education
Countries have agreed on and committed themselves to the United Nations’ Agenda 2030, including the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
Change Size
C
span>Countries have agreed on and committed themselves to the United Nations’ Agenda 2030, including the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This initiative requires significant transformations of societies and obviously institutions of higher learning have fundamental roles in these transformations. It also requires a new way of defining excellence in higher education, namely serving the needs and aspirations of society.
Up until now, universities have been assessed and ranked mainly based on their research output. Those universities that are lucky enough to have the resources to develop state-of-the-art teaching and research and development (R and D) infrastructure, and that can pay top salaries to attract and retain the world’s top scientists, will inevitably do well in the traditional university rankings. However, many other universities are quietly getting on with diverse activities that also make the world a better place in less celebrated ways which make steady, incremental yet vital contributions to climate science, to renewable sources of clean energy, tackling diseases, and fighting against poverty, etc. Such works are often less recognized in the current university ranking systems.
However, the world’s first university impact rankings announced on April 3 by the Times Higher Education (THE) World University Rankings, reveals a new hierarchy of global institutions of higher learning based on their work toward the SDGs. This is the world’s first global attempt to document evidence of universities’ impact on society, rather than just R and D and teaching performance.
It seeks to offer an alternative view of university excellence, giving greater prestige to applied research that tackles social and economic problems rather than just awarding academics for high citations in their research. The metrics also include universities’ policies on academic freedom, their use of secure employment contracts and their share of senior female academic staff.
According to THE, the rankings offer “an alternative view of university excellence” and “develop an unprecedented picture of the extraordinary impact that universities have across a huge range of activities”. This first edition included 462 universities from 76 countries. The rankings assessed universities on metrics that were based on 11 of the 17 UN SDGs.
Any university that provided data on the 17th SDG i.e. revitalizing global partnerships (the only mandatory goal) and at least three other SDGs were included in the overall ranking. THE also published the results of each individual SDG in 11 separate tables, and rewarded any university that had participated with a ranking position, even if they were not eligible to be in the overall table. The data for the rankings were normalized for university size where appropriate, and THE used other measures to ensure equity between different countries and universities.
In this first impact ranking, New Zealand’s University of Auckland took the first place and Canada’s McMaster University claimed second position. The rest of the top 10 included Canada’s University of British Columbia, the United Kingdom’s University of Manchester and King’s College London, Sweden’s University of Gothenburg and KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Canada’s University of Montreal, Italy’s University of Bologna and the University of Hong Kong. However, when countries are ranked based on their institutions’ average overall scores, Canada comes top followed by the Republic of Ireland and Australia. Japan is the most-represented nation in the table with 41 institutions, followed by the United States with 31 and Russia with 30.
A number of universities from Asia were also included in the individual SDG categories. Impressively, seven Indonesian universities are featured in this first edition of the world’s first impact ranking. These universities are University of Indonesia (UI, in rank 80), Diponegoro University in Semarang, Central Java and Gadjah Mada University (UGM), Yogyakarta, (in rank 101-200), Institute of Bogor Agriculture (IPB, in rank 201-300), Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB), Padjadjaran University and Yogyakarta State University (in rank 301+). Indonesian universities, with a good showing in this year’s inaugural impact rankings, should be encouraged to participate in greater numbers in the next edition of the impact rankings of THE.
This is a very promising development and Indonesia should use this momentum to strengthen its position within the global higher education sector. It is now high time for Indonesia to implement strategic collaboration among all its universities on SDGs at a national level. The first step would be to develop a guide for universities on how to get started with SDGs in universities including how to develop and share information on measuring R and D and teaching contributions to SDGs.
The seven universities should take the lead in this suggested national ambition. This initiative needs to involve students, faculty, staff and stakeholders using R and D and education to work with diverse community partners to get at the heart of what will make a difference within communities. However, the Indonesian university system needs to be restructured, allowing SDGs to be integrated into the curriculum and R and D.
Universities must align their current efforts and structures with SDGs in the first instance and then focus on taking a multidisciplinary approach to address the integrated nature of SDGs.
In conclusion, the new THE metrics challenge universities to think deeper about their societal contributions. Universities can lead the way in supporting just and responsible social change. Universities’ mission is to support students to reach their full potential and to understand complex societal challenges so they have the needed capacity to contribute to the world as ethical, compassionate and civic-minded global citizens.
A sustainable development approach requires long-term commitment and a strategy to institutionalize the work, and measuring social impact allows universities to be held accountable.
The “third mission” of universities seeks to generate knowledge outside academic environments to the benefit of social, cultural and economic development, which is hard to measure and often overlooked in universities’ strategy. The new impact rankings aim to bring about more balance into the missions of universities. Therefore, this is a timely and needed initiative to address the societal responsibilities of universities.
____________________
The writer is a senior consultant and university adviser from Sweden based in Jakarta. He is also a chemical engineering professor from Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden.
