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Singapore is right to question university rankings fixation. Research has a social value, too
- Outspoken academics have joined a growing conversation – one that recognises the worth of social, community based work
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As any first year Philosophy undergraduate can tell you, discussion and debate have been the beating heart of university life ever since Plato’s Academy.
With this in mind, the healthy, Socratic-like scepticism academics across Asia are showing towards society’s obsession with university rankings is to be welcomed.
Such rankings may have a purpose, but they are far from ideal, and academics globally are being increasingly bold in questioning this purpose.
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Professors Linda Lim and Pang Eng Fong highlighted in the South China Morning Post recently that placing undue emphasis on research that will capture headlines in academic journals often helps universities climb international league tables, but this comes at the expense of local research that could be more beneficial to society.
Last week, Singapore newspaper Today caused a stir with an article that highlighted the pitfalls of the rankings driven strategy. The article was based on interviews with 10 academics who had left the Nanyang Technological University and the National University of Singapore and was headlined “Opaque policies, fixation with KPIs, rankings: why arts and humanities academics quit NUS, NTU”.
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The newspaper later removed the article from its website, with Mediacorp, the paper’s parent company, quoted as saying the piece was the subject of a legal challenge.
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