Report on the 2nd Leiden University International Symposium on Ranking

The 2nd Leiden University International Symposium on Ranking was held at the Kamerlingh Onnes Building on 2 and 3 February 2007. There were about 200 participants who came from 34 different countries.

The conference was divided into three parts. A Friday morning session in which the audience was given an update on the ranking systems. This was followed by a session which considered the phenomenon of global ranking,  looked in detail at some ranking metrics, considered the development of a European Ranking Project, provided some insight into the ontogeny of a higher education institute classification system in Europe, discussed the Berlin Principles of Ranking, and provided some food for thought on the dilemmas posed by ranking in the face of trying to position one's university. Saturday morning was given over to some two case studies of development of world class universities, and an overview of national and institutional responses to the ranking.

The conference provided the participants with a number of significant messages:

1. Ranking is here to stay and will not go away, not even for a while. That is to say, universities need to deal with the impact of ranking since the ranking is out there and accessible to the general public. It is clear from the papers presented at the conference that the ranking is having an impact on the recruitment of excellent students.
   
   
2. It was also evident that the conference found ranking presently to be less than optimal. Choice of metrics, discipline bias, and systems of  'expert surveys' seen as peer review received substantial criticism to the point of making global ranking at least in serious need of overhaul and at most a complete re-think. The flaws that were seen in the current systems of ranking contributed to the problems facing universities in pursuit of attracting excellence.
   
   
3. New work is being done on the metrics that could be employed in ranking, thereby providing hope for better ranking systems in the future.  Particularly one can think of ranking not only by discipline but also by different aspects of performance, i.e., ranking with different types of performance indicators which are derived from the same set of basic data.
   
   
4. The Berlin Principles were a good starting point for assessing the current ranking efforts, but they would need further development to crystallize clear performance indicators and other measurements by which ranking systems could be evaluated. The composition of the current IREG group would need some changes to ensure that the dialogue with the those producing the rankings remained open, but that the process of evaluating ranking systems would need to be done without involvement of those being ranked to ensure greater credibility.