“About international university rankings and their repercussion in Argentina"

Abstract

In recent years, the spread of international rankings of
universities has caused tremors in the academic community and the university authorities of Argentina, and, journalistically, in a very widespread fashion. In some cases some weakness in the presence prominently among universities in the region has led to confusing explanations, and in other we are witnessing major efforts, including the allocation of human resources, to
work on improving the positions universities occupy. But in very few occasions there have been efforts to assess the suitability of this type of measurement to measure the quality of universities.
In these notes we seek to explain the origin and the
methodological difficulties of the international rankings, and the answers they are facing at international academic communities where the negative impacts of these too precarious measurements have been felt. We also identify the connection between these issues and national assessment policies in Argentina that have become relevant once again