Which came first: the money or the rank?

Abstract

Global university rankings are provided by several organisations based on various cri- teria, most of which are, directly or indirectly, related to the wealth of the university. The main objec- tive of this work was to examine the effect of money on rankings and vice versa. First, we examined the relationship between global university rankings and professors' salaries and found an asymptotic trend for all ranks of professors across the top 200 US universities, but no trend for the top Canadian universities. Second, we examined the relationship between global university rankings and univer- sity income and found a positive trend for UK and Canadian universities. Our results are consistent with the hypothesis that the funding (as well as autonomy and support of the state) of a university and its position in global rankings are related. We maintain that European universities in several coun- tries will not make it into the top 100 list unless their autonomy and public funding are increased. Instead, the recent decrease in public funding of universities in many European countries, as a result of the economic crisis, threatens to push these institutions further down the ranking lists.