A university's brand - crucial in helping to attract students, staff and funding - is built on esteem. Times Higher Education's first World Reputation Rankings reveal how academics view the strength of institutions' teaching and research, while John Morgan explores brand values, virtues and vices
In an increasingly competitive higher education marketplace, branding has become big business for universities.
Institutions know that, in a sense, the degrees they confer are worth only as much as their brand. In nations where tuition fees are established, students "buy" a brand that will appeal to the right businesses when it is time to find a job; their choice of university will become part of their own "brand identity". To attract the right calibre of academics, a university relies on its brand. And when those same academics submit a proposal for research funding or a paper to a leading journal, the brand of their institution may play a role in how their research is judged. The university's brand becomes part of their own brand as an academic.
The notion of a university as a brand is one that many in higher education are comfortable with. It induces a wave of nausea in others, who warn that by focusing on branding, universities promote a view of higher education as a commodity rather than as a good in itself.
But if a university is a brand, a key factor determining its strength is reputation in teaching and research (brand and reputation are distinct but related). And the views of academics on university reputation are crucial, for they give an insight into which institutions are best placed to attract top talent, and also influence the views of students and parents.
The results of the first Times Higher Education World Reputation Rankings shed light on this increasingly important measure. The reputation ranking is drawn from a survey of more than 13,000 experienced academics worldwide, carried out by polling company Ipsos for our rankings data provider, Thomson Reuters. The data informed the current Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2010-11, but are now published in isolation for the first time, revealing clear discrepancies between some institutions' reputations and their overall ranking.
"It is great to be able to see reputation in 'pure' form and to compare the outcome with the outcome by other measures," says Simon Marginson, professor of higher education at the University of Melbourne. "Reputation is itself an identifiable market - one that matters and has material effects. It is created by a number of accumulating factors: the weight of activity in hundreds of different institutional sites, relations and transactions; conscious promotional campaigns, major events that result in news reporting, memories of past activities; and word of mouth effects."
One notable surprise is the strong performance of Japanese institutions, with the University of Tokyo, Kyoto University and Osaka University all performing better in the World Reputation Rankings than they did in the World University Rankings.
Japan has five institutions in the reputation top 100, making it the best performer behind the US and the UK and producing a better score than major higher education nations such as Canada and Australia.
The US remains dominant in reputation, taking 45 of the places in the top 100, but again, there were some surprises.
The California Institute of Technology, rated second in the World University Rankings, is 10th on reputation. Marginson suggests that the institution's "specialist science research profile is tailor-made for the THE (main World University Rankings) and some other rankings", but that it is "not as well known as the more comprehensive Ivy Leaguers".
The UK universities generally do better in the reputation rankings compared with their overall rankings, with the London School of Economics rated 37th on reputation but 86th overall.
China's top-rated institution is Tsinghua University, in 35th place.
India, despite having no representative in the top 200 of the World University Rankings, can boast of one in the reputation table, the Indian Institute of Science (in the 91-100 band).
Of the four Australian universities in the reputation top 100, the leading two - the University of Melbourne and Australian National University - place lower than they did in the world rankings. This shift may betray a perception that "top Australians are not stellar quality", Marginson suggests, which "might be partly due to the fact that Australia markets 'Brand Australia' in the international education market as if all institutions are equivalent".
Crucially, there appears to be only a small number of globally recognised "super brands". Those completing the survey were asked to highlight what they believed to be the strongest universities in their specific fields. After the 20 most frequently cited universities, there is a rapid drop in the number of mentions given to institutions. Indeed, there were only very narrow differences between the scores of those below the rank of 50 (which is why they are ranked in groups of 10).
There is also a high correlation between the scores respondents gave to institutions for teaching and research. Nevertheless, in general, US and Japanese universities seem to have better reputations in research than in teaching.
It seems logical that larger institutions would fare better, because they are more likely to gain attention as they generate greater numbers of papers and offer more scope for academic exchanges and collaborations. However, Simon Pratt, project manager for institutional research at Thomson Reuters, says the data "do not show a strong correlation between institution size and reputation".
But he adds: "A size-related aspect does emerge when comparing differences between the results in the Reputation Rankings and the results for the World University Rankings. For example, those that do better in the Reputation Rankings than in the World University Rankings are often quite large universities such as the University of Tokyo, Kyoto University, the University of Massachusetts and the University of Wisconsin."
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