Don’t Trust the Rankings That Put China’s Universities on Top

Harvard, long a leader in global university rankings, recently fell to third in the Leiden Ranking while eight of the top 10 spots went to Chinese institutions. Other measures, such as the Nature Index and the University Ranking by Academic Performance, also show growing Chinese representation in upper tiers.

It’s easy to see these lists as evidence of a seismic shift in higher education dominance; the author argues that conclusion overstates the case. Goodhart’s law helps explain the gap between rankings and reality: when a metric becomes a target, institutions optimize the metric rather than the underlying quality.

For years Chinese universities paid cash rewards for publications — with an average payment of more than $43,000 for a Nature or Science paper in 2016 and one reported bonus of $165,000 — practices that can encourage rushed, shoddy or fraudulent work.

China

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