María del Pilar Lostao Crespo, Vice President of International Office of the University of Navarra, Spain.
Is it important to be in the top ten?
According to Pilar Lostao, Vice President and member of the scientific committee of Building Universities' Reputation 2015, there is room for improvement in the measurement of intangibles and, in this sense, "I dare to encourage the rankings and universities to engage in greater dialogue to achieve this".
The rankings use measurable indicators, reducing tangible, quantifiable realities to numbers. Although this is seen as something cold and reductionist, nowadays these numbers have an important value since they offer information to many people to choose their place of study or work. Likewise, for the university they are a tool for improvement and stimulate transparency. Thus the rankings, if well managed, can provide a great service and fulfill an important social function. The same could be said of audits, accreditations and other quality processes, which lead universities to quantify their reality and activity.
But there are other realities that bring a lot of value to the university and that constitute an important component of quality, which are the intangibles, realities that are difficult to measure.
For example, the humanistic training of the students, the skills and knowledge of the employees, the loyalty and pride of belonging of the employees, students and alumni, the high quality of the relationships inside and outside the institution, social responsibility, innovation capacity, sustainability...
To what extent do rankings and other measurement systems consider intangibles? There is probably room for improvement here.