Ilike the rankings. When the press echoes a ranking, whatever the subject – the best hospitals, the best zombie films, the most welcoming motorway service areas, the favorite monuments of the French – I cannot to stop looking at it, as if I was concerned. Most people are like me, I guess. It is like this: the rankings, in their mathematical simplicity, their brutality, their readability, have something fascinating about them. Launch one on any theme, made anyhow: you will see that it will be successful. Don’t be worried about the manufacturing method. It’s the last thing you care about when looking at a ranking. Moreover, most rankings are established according to criteria so arbitrary or narrow that they mean absolutely nothing; and no one stops at this little detail, which would deprive us of the pleasure they give us.
Take the Shanghai University Rankings, the latest edition of which has just been revealed. It is obvious that this classification is grotesque. The proof, he comes from Jiao Tong University in Shanghai, which does not appear in the top ten. A ranking that does not favor its creator, a shame! And that’s not his only flaw. Hundreds of commentators have criticized for years its biases, its arbitrary indicators, its way of comparing carrots and cabbage (from extremely rich American universities at 50,000 dollars a year and our almost free French universities), its indifference to local particularities education systems, etc. In short, the Shanghai ranking means almost nothing. But that does not prevent it from having become an object of worship for our rulers, who for several years have made it the alpha and omega of their decisions, such as forced marriages of universities to climb in the rankings.
Long live the classification of Bourbon-l’Archambault!
Personally, I hardly trust Shanghai’s ranking, so monotonous with its Ivy League universities which monopolize the first places each year, in one order or another. I prefer, by far, the classification of Bourbon-l’Archambault, so named in reference to the city where I designed it. Like its Chinese competitor, it ranks world universities according to a list of very serious criteria, carefully chosen to favor the establishments that I like the most. I won’t say which one comes out on top in 2022, so as not to make anyone jealous, but I can reveal that Harvard and Stanford come in 757 respectivelye and 958e positions, and that there are seven French universities in the top 10. If the ministry in the rue de Grenelle wants to know my method, I offer it to them; there will only be advantages for him to communicate less about our performance in the Shanghai ranking, and more about our success in the Bourbon ranking.
READ ALSOParis-Saclay, the renaissance of the French university
As nice as rankings, there are also anti-rankings, or reverse order rankings. It’s about rewarding the worst in a specific area. The dirtiest highway areas. The most disgusting seaside restaurants. The streets of Paris most disfigured by urban development, etc. The selection criteria can be as arbitrary and biased as in normal rankings, it doesn’t matter: the goal of the game is to let go of your gall, and to please the slanderer who lies dormant in each of us. Once we have invented a few of them, we can make a classification of all the classifications. We will then see what happens to that of Shanghai, whose authors will be less clever. That of Bourbon, on the other hand, will surely have a good place, just like this humble chronicle in the list of the most absurd ideas that you will have heard today.