[Academic Mercenary Follow-up] ⑥ A prestigious Dutch university withdraws from university rankings... “Focus on only 1%”

“University rankings are essentially for the top 200 ‘happy few’ universities. They focus on only 1% of the world’s 20,000 universities.”

On the 12th, Professor Hank Kumeling and Professor Paul Boselli responded as follows to a Yonhap News interview question asking why Utrecht University in the Netherlands withdrew from university rankings, which surprised the academic world three years ago.

Rankings by global rating agencies such as the UK's QS (Quacquarelli Symonds) and THE (Times Higher Education) have recently been pointed out as the background to the controversy over the 'academic mercenaries' of domestic universities.

Behind Go In-yong's strategy of recruiting foreign researchers under a loose employment relationship was the university's 'survival pressure' to improve its rankings for global visibility.

However, there are also universities that go directly against this order.

Utrecht University, which ranked 66th in THE rankings in 2022, publicly declared that it would not submit data to evaluation agencies in the future immediately after the rankings were released.

At the time, the highest ranking among domestic universities was Seoul National University (56th), and universities evaluated at a similar level declared a 'boycott'.

The intention was to no longer be buried in the competition to calculate scores. Another reason is that the statistics of external organizations that promote this competition are one-sided and unclear.

Professor Kumeling was the president at the time, and Professor Boselli is currently serving as the head of the relevant department at Utrecht University.

In an email interview with Yonhap News, they emphasized that the decision to withdraw from the rankings did not come overnight.

It is explained as the latest version of the 'open science' movement, which aims to contribute to social development by opening research results to the public rather than distributing them narrowly within the confines of academia.

In addition, the decision to withdraw was made after a long and reflective approach to the global academic atmosphere in which various academic indicators used in calculating university rankings are emphasized rather than research itself.

They cited the decision not to use quantitative indicators such as 'impact factor' or 'H-index' when evaluating researchers in 2021 as a turning point.

The influence index and H index are indicators based on the number of citations of papers written by researchers.

The diagnosis is that if the critical awareness, methodology, and social influence of research are expressed only in these indicators, the research itself will be distorted, and there is concern about a situation where the tail (indicators) shakes the body (research).

Professor Boselli has repeatedly pointed out in media interviews, etc., "These indices promote the 'commercialization of science' by placing more emphasis on the results themselves than on good research."

When asked if there were any concerns that the university's status would decline due to withdrawal from the rankings, he replied, "It was mainly the marketing people who were worried at the time."

The Dutch government's policy direction also gave strength.

At the time, the Dutch education and research support authorities stepped in as strong 'backbenchers' for the university, which decided to focus on openness in research rather than 'fighting over indicators'.

The two professors explained that the Dutch government was also wary of a situation where the true results of research were not revealed, but were reduced to only numbers such as the number of cited and published papers, and were used wastefully in competition between universities.

In 2019, Dutch officials declared in a joint statement with universities that “overreliance on quantifiable outcome indicators disrupts the social impact and diversity of research and impedes the practice of open science.”

This is in contrast to the lukewarm attitude of the Korean Ministry of Education, which launched an 'academic mercenary investigation' against 13 domestic universities, but only examined formal employment relationships and ignored the 'inflated indicators' situation, which is the main source of the suspicion.

The two professors pointed out that in the Netherlands, even in the research funding and research evaluation process, each university places more emphasis on the goals that each university sets for itself to achieve qualitative growth rather than quantifiable indicators.

A representative example is the 2027-2033 ‘Strategy Evaluation Protocol’ prepared by an organization under the Netherlands Ministry of Education, Culture and Science in collaboration with the Netherlands Council of Universities.

It states that “the organization shall prioritize its own strategies and achievements, use quantitative indicators responsibly, and strive to evaluate qualitative aspects.”

Professors Kumeling and Boselli's assessment is that through these policies, the government is actively creating conditions for universities to avoid wasteful competition for indicators and become more substantial. He emphasized that the role of educational authorities is that important.

They pointed out that university rankings are a system with clear limitations, saying, “It has uniform standards and places universities in a corner of the rankings based on scores alone.”

The diagnosis is that universities do not respect the fact that they adopt education and research strategies that are most appropriate for the situations and conditions of each society, and enforce a one-sided order centered on indicators.

They said that world-renowned universities such as Switzerland's Zurich University and France's Sorbonne University have also joined the ranks of 'withdrawing from the rankings,' and that voices calling for an alternative research evaluation system are growing louder.

At the same time, he urged all members of the world's academic community to change their perception of rankings and to stand in solidarity with this movement.

They warned, "Withdrawing from the rankings was a conscious 'cultural shift' linked to our open science beliefs toward a better world," and added, "There is no longer any place for a poor university ranking system that is overly focused on competition."