Going down

 

The Times Higher Education world reputation rankings have just been released and there really aren’t many surprises.

The usual suspects—Harvard, MIT, Cambridge, Oxford, etc.—remain at the top.

And American public universities are going down, just as they did in the 2012-13 world university rankings.

Overall, the US continues to dominate the rankings, with seven of the top 10 places and a total of 76 institutions in the top 200 – one more than last year and 45 more than any other nation. The UK has 31 representatives, followed by the Netherlands with 12.

But the US’ dominance of the rankings masks a picture of decline.

Although the US ultra-elite at the summit of the rankings have generally managed to consolidate their positions – with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology rising two places to fifth and the University of California, Berkeley moving from 10th to ninth – many more American institutions fell than climbed the table.

“If you only give a casual glance at the top 200, you’re likely to think it’s just a round-up of the usual suspects,” says Ruby. “Yes, many of the big names of US higher education head the list – the ‘super-brands’ still dominate, and they will continue to do so while they attend to core business and protect their image as elite research-based institutions.

“But when you look more closely, most of the flagship US public universities are slipping down.”

Of the US’ 76 institutions, 19 have risen and six have held their positions, but 51 have fallen, with precipitous decline further down the table.

Although both private and public US institutions are among the fallen, the public ones have been hardest hit.

Key research institutions in the University of California system – San Diego (falling from 33rd to 38th), Davis (joint 38th to joint 44th), Irvine (86th to 96th), Santa Cruz (110th to joint 122nd) – suffer drops. Other significant casualties include Pennsylvania State University (51st to 61st), the University of Massachusetts (64th to joint 72nd), the University of Colorado Boulder (joint 77th to 91st) and Arizona State University (joint 127th to 148th).

“The slide is probably the result of the loss of state support,” says Ruby, who served for more than six years as Australia’s deputy secretary of employment, education, training and youth affairs before taking up an academic post in the US. “You cannot keep savaging the basic running costs of high-performing institutions without hurting service delivery. And after a few years the message reaches the market: these places are losing comparative advantage.”

And that’s exactly what’s been happening, according to the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities. Public universities and colleges in nearly every state have seen their state funding decline sharply. Nationwide, states are on average spending 28 percent less this year than they did in 2008, a decrease of $2,353 per student.  As a result, colleges and universities have had to raise tuition, make changes that undermine educational quality, or usually both.

Not surprisingly, the changing position of American universities mirrors the larger political economy of the United States: a few “super-brands” at the top (which educate the sons and daughters of the world’s elite) continue to stay at the top while most of the others (which are supposed to educate the children of the American working-class) are falling behind, both nationally and internationally.

It’s time, it seems, to occupy higher education.