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By:

Dr. Kishore Paknikar

29 January 2025 at 8:13:00 pm

Who Really Benefits When Varsities Chase the Numbers?

The Ranking Trap - Part 2 As rankings shape academic reputations and institutional priorities, the pursuit of higher positions risks turning a measure of excellence into an end in itself. AI Generated Image The annual university rankings are announced. Some institutions celebrate, others express disappointment, and many begin examining what they must do to improve their position next year. Publicity departments prepare announcements. Administrators study the indicators. Students and parents...

Who Really Benefits When Varsities Chase the Numbers?

The Ranking Trap - Part 2 As rankings shape academic reputations and institutional priorities, the pursuit of higher positions risks turning a measure of excellence into an end in itself. AI Generated Image The annual university rankings are announced. Some institutions celebrate, others express disappointment, and many begin examining what they must do to improve their position next year. Publicity departments prepare announcements. Administrators study the indicators. Students and parents take notice. Governments, funding agencies and potential collaborators may also pay attention. An entire ecosystem responds to the movement of numbers. In the first article of this series, I argued that rankings provide an incomplete picture of educational and scientific excellence. But that raises an equally interesting question. If their limitations are widely recognised, why have they become so influential and who really benefits? The Ranking Economy For some organisations, rankings and research-performance information are commercial activities. QS publishes international university rankings and offers institutional analysis and advisory services. Elsevier supplies bibliometric databases and research analytics used by universities and research organisations. These are different activities, and providing paid services does not, by itself, establish that a ranking or database is unreliable. The more important question concerns the incentives created when institutions become increasingly dependent on numerical comparisons. As universities attach greater importance to their measured performance, demand grows for analytical tools, consultancy, benchmarking and services that help institutions understand and communicate their achievements. But commercial organisations are hardly the only beneficiaries. Universities gain prestige and publicity. Administrators acquire convenient indicators for demonstrating progress. Governments and funding agencies obtain seemingly straightforward comparisons. Students and parents receive simple guidance through a complicated educational landscape. Even the media benefit. A university's rise or fall in a ranking makes an attractive headline. Rankings survive partly because they provide something genuinely useful: simplicity. They compress enormous amounts of information into numbers that are easy to understand and communicate. While their convenience is real, their apparent completeness is not. Peer Pressure Consider what happens when a university announces that it has moved up ten places. The institution publicises the achievement. Prospective students and collaborators notice. Other universities become anxious about their own positions. Administrators study the ranking criteria more closely. Ranking organisations gain further visibility and influence. The process reinforces itself. Universities treat rankings as important because others pay attention to them. Others pay attention because universities treat them as important. Eventually, participation becomes difficult to avoid, even for institutions that recognise the limitations of the system. The influence of rankings therefore does not come solely from those who prepare them. It comes from the authority that universities, governments, funding agencies and society collectively confer upon them. Three words are frequently used as though they mean the same thing: excellence, recognition and reputation. But they do not. Excellence concerns what a scientist or institution actually achieves. Recognition concerns whether those achievements are noticed and acknowledged. Reputation concerns what others believe about their quality. A scientist may produce outstanding work without attracting much attention. An institution may retain a prestigious reputation even when its performance changes. Another may be improving rapidly while remaining relatively unknown. Reputation can outlive the evidence that originally created it. Recognition, meanwhile, may take years to catch up with emerging excellence. Consider the widely publicised Stanford–Elsevier Top 2 percent Scientists lists. A 2026 study in Scientometrics identified 123 universities across 32 countries referring to these lists in official communications. This does not mean that the scientists were undeserving, or that all universities behave similarly. It illustrates how citation-based recognition has become a source of institutional publicity. A researcher may have spent decades producing valuable work without much public acknowledgement. Appearance in a widely publicised list can suddenly generate congratulatory messages, press releases and social media attention. What changed? The scientist's work did not necessarily change overnight. Its visibility did. Recognition is valuable, but we should not confuse the ease of celebrating an achievement with the significance of the achievement itself. Reputation can be converted into opportunity. A prestigious university may attract talented students, accomplished faculty, philanthropic support, research funding and industrial partnerships. These advantages can strengthen its educational and research performance, helping it maintain or improve its position in subsequent rankings. Meanwhile, another institution may have capable teachers and imaginative researchers but inadequate laboratories, limited funding and little national visibility. Rankings need not have created these inequalities. But they can reinforce advantages that already exist. The cycle is straightforward. Achievement attracts recognition. Recognition builds reputation. Reputation attracts resources. Resources create further opportunities for achievement. Rankings can reinforce the entire process. This becomes particularly important when rankings influence public investment. Should scarce research funds go primarily to institutions with proven records, or should some be directed towards institutions capable of achieving much more if given an opportunity? There is no simple answer. Advanced research requires sophisticated facilities and experienced teams. Ignoring established capability would be irresponsible. But concentrating resources indefinitely among successful institutions could prevent promising new centres from emerging. India's Anusandhan National Research Foundation provides an instructive example through its Partnerships for Accelerated Innovation and Research (PAIR) programme. In its first phase, eligibility to lead research networks as hubs was linked to specified NIRF positions. At the same time, the programme deliberately included less-established institutions as partners to strengthen their research capabilities. This is a constructive attempt to combine established capacity with emerging potential. It illustrates a larger policy challenge: rewarding past achievement and creating future opportunity are different objectives, and they need not always rely on identical criteria. Goodhart’s Law Rankings influence not only how institutions are perceived but also how they behave. A university seeking a higher position studies the indicators, identifies where points can be gained and adjusts its priorities. Some changes may genuinely improve teaching, research or infrastructure. Others may primarily improve its score. This is the danger captured by Goodhart’s law: when a measure becomes a target, it may lose its usefulness as a measure. If publication counts dominate evaluation, researchers may feel pressure to publish more frequently. If citations carry excessive weight, fashionable subjects may become more attractive than difficult questions whose significance is uncertain. If reputation is heavily rewarded, publicity may receive disproportionate attention. These outcomes are not inevitable. Indicators can encourage genuine improvement. The problem arises when success on the indicator becomes more important than the purpose it was intended to represent. Competition can improve performance, but science also depends on cooperation, shared facilities and the exchange of ideas. A system that rewards relative position too heavily may weaken incentives to collaborate. Perhaps the most revealing feature of rankings is that even their apparent winners may lose some freedom. A highly ranked university cannot easily disregard the system because its prestige is partly tied to it. Administrators become anxious about annual movements. Researchers celebrated for appearing on citation lists may feel pressure to remain there. Institutions that recognise the weaknesses of rankings may nevertheless continue celebrating favourable results. Refusing to participate can appear more damaging than accepting a system they do not entirely trust. The ranking trap is therefore not simply a story about commercial interests or academic vanity. It is a system of mutually reinforcing incentives that has become difficult to escape. Rankings contain useful information. The problem is the authority we have allowed them to acquire. We created rankings to recognize excellence. We now risk mistaking success in rankings for excellence itself. (The writer is an ANRF Prime Minister Professor at COEP Technological University, Pune, and former Director of the Agharkar Research Institute, Pune. Views personal.)

Gun Violence in America

Writer: Vishwas Pethe
Vishwas Pethe
Dec 27, 2024
3 min read

Updated: Jan 2, 2025

Gun Violence in America

On December 16, 2024, tragedy struck Abundant Life Christian School in Madison, Wisconsin, where a 15-year-old student, Natalie Rupnow, fatally shot a fellow student and a teacher before taking her own life. Six others were injured, with two in critical condition. This devastating event is a grim reminder of the United States' ongoing struggle with gun violence, particularly in schools.


A Long History of Gun Ownership in America

The issue of gun violence in the United States cannot be discussed without acknowledging its deep-rooted history of gun ownership. The right to bear arms is enshrined in the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, adopted in 1791, which states: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”


Initially, this amendment was intended to empower citizens to form militias for self-defense during a time when standing armies were distrusted. Over the centuries, however, the interpretation of the Second Amendment has evolved. Today, it is often cited as a justification for individual gun ownership, a concept reinforced by landmark court cases such as District of Columbia v. Heller (2008), which affirmed an individual's right to own firearms for self-defense.


Gun culture is deeply ingrained in American society, with nearly 400 million firearms in civilian hands—more guns than people. This level of accessibility, coupled with a powerful gun lobby led by organizations like the National Rifle Association (NRA), has made significant legislative reform difficult.


Gun Violence in Numbers

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), firearms cause approximately 40,000 deaths annually in the United States—equivalent to 109 deaths per day. This figure includes homicides, suicides, and accidental shootings. Among children and teenagers, firearms are now the leading cause of death, surpassing motor vehicle accidents.


School shootings are a particularly horrifying aspect of gun violence in America. Since 1990, there have been over 800 incidents in K-12 schools, resulting in more than 500 deaths and over 1,000 injuries. High-profile tragedies such as the Columbine High School massacre (1999), the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting (2012), and the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School attack (2018) have shocked the nation and the world, yet meaningful reforms remain elusive.


A Global Comparison

The United States stands out among developed nations for its high rate of gun violence. In countries like Australia, Canada, and much of Europe, strict gun control measures have significantly reduced firearm-related deaths. For example: By contrast, the firearm-related death rate in the United States is 12.2 per 100,000 people, significantly higher than other developed nations. The prevalence of guns and the lack of uniform gun control laws contribute to this disparity.


Challenges in Addressing Gun Violence

Efforts to reduce gun violence in the U.S. have faced significant obstacles. One of the most notable is the prohibition of federal funding for gun violence research. In 1996, Congress passed the Dickey Amendment, effectively barring the CDC from studying gun violence as a public health issue. Although the funding ban was partially lifted in 2019, its legacy has left the country with a limited understanding of the causes and solutions to gun violence.


Advocates have long called for measures such as:

• Universal Background Checks: Closing loopholes in gun sales to ensure that all firearm purchases are subject to background checks.

• Safe Storage Laws: Requiring gun owners to store firearms securely to prevent unauthorized access.

• Bans on Certain Firearms: Prohibiting the sale of assault-style weapons, which are often used in mass shootings.


The Debate Over Gun Rights and Reform

The debate over gun control in the United States often pits the rights of gun owners against the need for public safety. Opponents of stricter gun laws argue that restrictions infringe on constitutional rights and fail to address the root causes of violence, such as mental health issues. Proponents, however, point to the success of gun control measures in other countries and the overwhelming public support for policies like background checks.


A Way Forward

Despite the challenges, there is growing momentum for change. Grassroots organizations, survivors of gun violence, and some lawmakers are advocating for comprehensive reforms. The Madison school shooting serves as a stark reminder of the urgency of these efforts. As the nation grapples with its gun violence epidemic, it must look to both its history and the experiences of other countries to find a path toward a safer future.


(The author is a resident of US. Views personal.)

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