Diverse university rankings are increasingly valued as undergraduate education quality indicators in recent years. These have become meaningful for students, their families, the job market, and institutions such as national or regional governments, NGOs, etc. In addition, university rankings are emerging as a straightforward indicator to compare somehow the quality of higher education institutions and underline the tough competition for attracting resources and students, not to mention their impact on the media. Most of these league tables highlight research as one of the main assets of the university system. Since undergraduate instruction focuses on professional education, we reflect on whether undergraduate academic excellence should rely only on research activity or also on teaching and learning quality in terms of competency achievement and learning outcomes. Hence the latter should also be considered as a relevant feature within higher education rankings. Accreditation criteria look for quality education evidence. Surprisingly, the criteria employed by accreditation agencies for undergraduate programs lie far from the composite indexes used by ranking agencies to measure quality outcomes. Since most current undergraduate curricula focus on learning outcomes and competencies, the previous step is to spot the desired ones of the educational process unambiguously and the implications to achieve them. According to ABET, the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology, student outcomes describe what students are expected to know and be able to do by graduation 2. These relate to the knowledge, skills, and behaviours that students acquire as they progress throughout the syllabus. Besides, a quick definition of competency is the combination of skills, abilities, and knowledge needed to perform a specific task 3. A deeper one could be the ability to meet successfully complex demands in a particular context through the mobilization of psychological prerequisites including both cognitive and noncognitive aspects 4. The latter definition entails a holistic perspective, i.e. a behavioural implication, cognitive and noncognitive abilities, and the ability to use a set of capabilities deliberately 5. All rankings claim to measure academic excellence 6; however, not all show the same results or lack consistency among them. Indeed, albeit most league tables overlap, odd results appear. For instance, institutions positioned at the top 100 in one league table rank at lower positions or, in some cases, vanish in other ranking systems. 7. Hence, reflecting on whether university rankings adequately measure undergraduate academic quality emerges as a necessary task. In this study, we signal some controversies and disagreements in the rankings. Other publications identify indicators that do not agree, showing inconsistencies. This study gives an insight into some dimensions proper for assessing quality in undergraduate higher education institutions (HEIs), overviews some national and international relevant rankings for Spanish and Latin American universities, analyses their criteria, and compares them. We conclude that HEIs should open a debate on the appropriate dimensions and criteria to measure undergraduate instruction quality in universities. Such dimensions should also include the impact on human progress, transversal and global competencies, and commitment to sustainability.
Chiyón-Carrasco et al. (Sun,) studied this question.