Some institutions even are led to game the system by making changes that have little positive educational impact but do respond to the criteria used by the rankers.

Still there is alternative ways to separate the educational sheep from the academic goats. The “Lake Wobegon system” proposed expanding the number of institutions that could be included in the “Top Fifty World-Class Universities,” so that more of them could be considered above average. The “Jeremy Bentham system” would rank institutions, according to the level of happiness they provided. The “Olympic system” suggested that rankings be based on head-to-head competition of institutional faculty engaging in feats of physical prowess, while simultaneously engaging in scholarly work.

The beginnings of new opportunities can already be seen in the new U-Multiranking rating system, sponsored by the European Commission, which creates metrics in five areas—from teaching to knowledge transfer. Using this system, any group or institution can apply its own weights to self-selected variables, thus allowing each to determine the criteria by which it should be judged. Anyway for many, if not most, national systems the emphasis on developing a world-class ranking should probably not be on research universities but on regional and local institutions, emphasizing teaching and curriculums based on social needs.

Source: R.Birnbaum. International Higher Education #67, Spring 2012