When St Andrews topped a table of UK universities last week, the 15th-century Scottish institution posted a photograph of a student leaping with joy in its quadrangle. Professor Sally Mapstone, vice-chancellor, predicted an amiable reaction to it surpassing Oxford and Cambridge: “I expect there may be a little gentle cross-border teasing.”
If only. It is often said that academic disputes are so vicious because the stakes are so small, but college rankings are not a trivial matter. They are keenly tracked not only by students and parents, but academics, employers and potential donors. In the contest to draw international students, an attractive rating is a prize currency.
Since elite degrees are passports to professional jobs and improved social status, higher education behaves like a consumer industry, and the rankings business expands accordingly. A Chinese student whose family faces a $70,000 bill each year for her to attend a US university wants proof that the institution has aced its own examinations.