DLSU slid from the 551-600 brackets to the 601+ bracket Quacquarelli Symonds’ (QS) general ranking of worldwide universities. The University, along with Ateneo De Manila University (ADMU) and the University of the Philippines (UP), is part of the top 200 in 2013’s QS World University Ranking by subject. DLSU ranked top 101-150 in English language and literature, with ADMU and UP ranking top 51-100. DLSU previously ranked 44th in the aforementioned subject.
The QS Rankings
Quacquarelli Symonds was established in 1990 as “the leading global provider of specialist higher education and careers information and solutions.” It is working with over 2000 of the world’s leading higher education institutions and over 12,000 employers.
Initially, a pool of more than 2,000 universities is taken into consideration, but only the top 700 are ranked. The first 400 universities are ranked individually, while those who place 401 onwards are ranked into brackets of 50, with the exception for the last 100, which are collectively grouped as 601+.
The university rankings are based on six indicators with corresponding percentages: 40 percent for Academic Reputation, 10 percent for Employer Reputation, 20 percent for Citations per Faculty, 20 percent for Faculty Student Ratio, 5 percent for Proportion of International Students, and 5 percent for Proportion of International Faculty.
Meanwhile, the rankings by subject cover 30 fields under five major categories: Arts & Humanities, Life Sciences & Medicine, Social Sciences, Engineering & Technology, and Natural Sciences. The top 200 universities are then ranked based on each field.
A university’s indicator
The QS World University Rankings was initiated in 2004 by QS and Times Higher Education (THE) due to the need of a ranking system that provides a basis of comparison of each university’s success as a world-class institution.
Moreover, the rankings also served as a standard for international students in considering which university to study in abroad.
According to an article last June 6, 2012 by the Ateneo Alumni Association, ADMU has been participating in the QS University Rankings since 2005.
In the newsletter of UP, UP Vice President for Public Affairs Cristina Pantoja Hidalgo stated that UP has never agreed to participate in the survey, as the university believes that it must carefully examine the basis of the evaluation of the rankings and be convinced of its reliability and methodology before participating in the exercise.
Business-driven rankings
In his investigative research last September 3, 2008 that assessed the relevance of world university rankings, College of Education (CED) professor Francisco de la Cruz Jr. questioned if the rankings involve moneymaking business.
Francisco Guevara, professor from the Literature department attests, “What university rankings partially highlight, but do not discuss, is a university’s financial willingness to participate and be measured in the university ranking system’s criteria and process.”
DLSU chose not to pay the fee required for the institution to be evaluated by QS, a move that may explain the number of 0.00 scores incurred by the University in several aspects that involve faculty and academic reputation, as well as in the Engineering and Sciences departments.
Just as de la Cruz inquired, Guevara believes that, “these ranking systems are businesses in as much as they are designed to provide a service geared towards profitability, and they will only provide a service to those universities who pay for it.”
Affecting DLSU?
DLSU President-Chancellor Br. Ricky Laguda FSC stresses that though the rankings may give an idea of how the University fares against other schools, it does not accurately reflect the school’s vision mission and values as a Lasallian Higher Educational Institution.
According to Br. Ricky, the University specializes in holistically developing and educating learners. “We equipped our learners not only with certain technical skills needed by industry but values that make them more human and better citizens,” he furthers.
In addition, he states that the University has taken measures that assess the school’s successes different from surveys such as QS. “We monitor how [we can] be more accessible in terms of giving quality education. We also monitor how our graduates imbibed the core values of faith, service, and communion as embedded in the expected Lasallian graduate attributes,” he explains.
In light of the QS results, Br. Ricky assures that the University will continue to produce competent leaders in various fields, concluding, “These survey results may give us an idea of what else we can do in order to be a better Lasallian educational institution. The survey is not the end but only a means to understand ourselves better.”
Likewise, University Research Coordination Office (URCO) Director Madelene Sta. Maria believes that the rankings do not qualify as a usable standard to base the school’s goals and strategies in becoming a leading research university in Asia.
“The survey results do not really tell us anything of the quality and importance of our intellectual contribution to world knowledge,” she says, further clarifying that the QS rankings do not reflect the efforts of their office in forwarding research done in the University.
