Are we letting the rankings rule us now?

ACROSS the world, and increasingly here at home, universities are caught in an endless race for visibility. We celebrate every rise in global ranking, but few pause to ask what the climb costs. In this environment, academics are often stretched thin, juggling large classes, student mentoring, grant applications, and publishing, all while filling in endless administrative documents. It feels less like a noble pursuit of knowledge and more like a rat race, where everyone runs frantically to achieve their KPIs, no matter the toll.

Let me be clear: rankings are not inherently wrong. Without any form of external benchmarking, we risk complacency and a drop in standards. They can be a useful tool for motivating improvement and accountability. The danger, however, is not in the metric itself, but in our obsession with it.

What we need is a moderate approach, where we use rankings as one of many tools, not as the ultimate goal.

The problem arises when the global stage is treated as a level playing field. Some universities are generously funded and have lighter teaching loads, allowing a strong focus on research. Many others, however, must juggle far heavier teaching responsibilities with much more limited resources. To compare them by the same yardstick is not only unfair, it risks distorting the very soul of education.

What does it mean to be a university anymore? Is our primary purpose to be an efficient engine for the economy? A factory for degrees? Or is it to be a conscience for society and a sanctuary for deep thought? When we reward metrics above meaning, what are we teaching our students? That a high score is more important than genuine discovery? If we are only a collection of KPIs, we have not only lost our way, we have lost our “why”.

This “why” must be rooted in values. A university’s true measure is not its rank, but the character of its graduates. Our ultimate mission is not just to produce skilled professionals, but to cultivate a generation of leaders with high values: integrity, empathy, intellectual humility, and a deep sense of purpose. When we place more emphasis on the soul of our education, we build a better society.

This is not a new idea. What did Fatima al-Fihri, the visionary woman who founded the world’s first university in Fez, Morocco, in 859 CE, imagine when she opened the doors of al-Qarawiyyin? Surely her vision was not of numerical rankings or citation counts. She envisioned a gathering of wisdom, a place where learning was a noble act, and knowledge a means to serve humanity and contribute to the greater good.

Somewhere along the way, we seem to have lost that spirit. The modern university, for all its glittering metrics, seems to be forgetting its soul. Perhaps it is time we pause this chase and ask: Are we truly cultivating wisdom, or have we begun to worship the ranking itself? If the latter, then no matter how high we climb, we are, in truth, falling.

ASSOC PROF DR RABIAH TUL ADAWIYAH MOHAMED SALLEH

Department of English Language and Literature

International Islamic University Malaysia