The CHE University Ranking in Germany.doc

The CHE University Ranking in Germany Maarja Soo and David D. Dill University of North Carolina Department of Public Policy Introduction The idea of university rankings has gained a remarkable popularity in the last 20 years (van Dyke, 2005). The first academic rankings were created in the US in 1925 by Raymond Hughes a professor of chemistry and later a university president (Webster, 1992). Responding to a request from the North Central Accrediting Association for a study of graduate schools, Hughes conducted a reputational survey and produced the first published academic rankings, which in this case were rankings of the quality of graduate level degree programs in the primary academic disciplines in the United States. Hughes’ rankings created an important precedent and similar reputational rankings of the quality of graduate degree programs were repeated in 1934 by Hughes himself, in 1959 by Hayward Kinston, and in 1966 by Alan Carrter. This tradition of multidisciplinary rankings of graduate degree programs based upon reputational surveys has been continued in the United States by the National Research Council (NRC), a private, nonprofit institution that provides science, technology and health policy advice to the federal government under a congressional charter. The inaugural US News and World Report (USNWR ) rankings of 1983, usually cited as the first university rankings, therefore broke with this tradition, first by being produced by a commercial publisher rather than by members of the academy, and second by providing rankings of whole institutions focused on the supposed quality of undergraduate or first-level education. The USNWR rankings inspired a new international industry in university “league tables” and now universities are regularly ranked in at least 20 countries (Merisotis 2006). The practice has been adopted in education systems as different as Germany, Canada, China, and Nigeria. Furthermore, university rankings have crossed nationa