University Rankings and The Perils of Prestige
Roger Brown's impressive essay in Times Higher Education regarding the quest for prestige in Higher Education is a must read. The fact that the four new universities admitted into UK's elite Russell Group paid £500,000 apiece for the privilege goes on to show how dysfunctional all of this has become, particularly because this only appears so normal. Martin Trow, quoted by Dr Brown, may have said that Higher Education is not an outcome, but a process, but this does not seem to be the message of Higher Education anywhere in the world. Higher Education, instead of being seen as a progression to advanced level of education after school, is usually projected as a 'Higher' thing, a marker for power and prestige. A prestige-obsessed sector wastes precious resources in pursuit of prestige, as observed not just in UK, but in the US, where 'Harvard Envy' (as Andrew Rosen puts it) pushes up the costs and reduces faculty interaction in the unending quest of academic ...