Before diving into the subject, let's keep one thing in mind: any ranking is, by nature, arbitrary. Prioritizing, on a single axis, a set of establishments that are fundamentally different on several levels is an extremely simplistic exercise.

Rankings are comparative evaluations that make it possible to establish a hierarchy between several institutions according to their own methodology and criteria. In a sector that has become international and highly competitive in just a few decades, they are now an essential orientation tool for students. “They are part of the criteria for choosing young people for their school” confirms Dahvia Ouadia, a journalist at L'Etudiant and in charge of the annual national ranking of business schools. And Loick Roche, CEO of Grenoble École de Management, added: “The rankings have a major place. They are part of the principle of reality: they allow us to be audible. To be efficient, we have a ranking strategy. It's not the thread running through all our decisions, but it's important.” A point of view shared by Isabelle Huault, CEO of emlyon, who affirms that even if “rankings should not take the place of strategy, they are important because they are a lever of attractiveness for the students and research professors who join us”. Which highlights, however, “that by looking only at the criteria present in the rankings, we risk generating a lot of inertia. You must then have strong beliefs and a well-constituted educational project.”

What do the rankings judge? Although there are a multitude of them, national and international, with their own methods and criteria; it is possible to draw generalities from the elements valued by the rankings. To remain as accurate as possible, I decided to focus my research and interviews on business school rankings. The article “Analysis of international rankings of higher education institutions” by Nadine Dalsheimer and Denis Despréaux allows me to identify three almost universal criteria concerning them.

The common denominator of all rankings is the importance given to research. To judge the quality of an institution's research, the indicators used may concern the number of articles published in internationally recognized journals, the number of Nobel Prizes awarded to former students, the budget devoted to research, or the number of citations per publication.

The second pillar of rankings is based on the quality of the university program. To assess it, the criteria assess, for example, the unemployment rate at the exit, the average initial salary, the number of university awards won or even career rank, i.e. the status of alumni in business three years after graduation.

Finally, the international openness of institutions is often taken into account with elements such as the proportion of international students and teachers or the number of partnerships with foreign universities.

You don't have to be Einstein to guess it: the criteria that are almost universally valued by rankings are difficult to match with a strategy for integrating environmental issues into campus life and education. Let's go back to the three pillars mentioned above to prove it.

An institution's research excellence is often evaluated using criteria such as the number of articles published in internationally recognized scientific journals. However, these journals are characterized by their ultra-specialization, which does not encourage the exploration of environmental topics, which are systemic and which benefit from being studied in a multidisciplinary manner. “We are required to publish on extremely narrow disciplinary fields”, regrets Alice Guilhon, Executive Director of Skema Business School. “This leaves very little room for interdisciplinarity.” Indeed, the siloed structuring of research does not encourage research professors to invest in these fields of research, at the risk of dropping their institution in the rankings and taking risks for their careers.

The quality of university education is also evaluated through the prism of indicators that cannot be reconciled with the school's positioning on sustainable development issues. For example, the leaving salary of students is considered to be indicative of the educational quality of institutions. Clearly, this does not encourage institutions to push their students into the public, voluntary, or social entrepreneurship sectors, which are beneficial to the environment but generally less rewarding.

Finally, the strong value of openness to the international community encourages the multiplication of partnerships between universities on both sides of the world, with air travel that is highly emitting of greenhouse gases.

Do you notice anything at this point? The criteria used in the rankings and their weighting method tend to value large establishments. Youssef Errami, director general of ESC Pau, knows something about it: “Regularly, rankings are built on the basis of the size of the school. As a result, a small school like ours is excluded from the spectrum. For example, one of the criteria for evaluating research excellence is the number of articles published per year in scientific journals. Despite the performance of our team, the absolute number of publications by our researchers is lower than that of the largest institutions.” The reflection can be based on many criteria: “rankings are sometimes interested in the number of international agreements established by the school. However, I can already send all the students who want to abroad! I have no interest in duplicating the school's international agreements.”

Rankings therefore create a dynamic race for growth within institutions, which is also encouraged by public policies in higher education and research in France. Gérald Majou, project manager at the Conference of Grandes Écoles, tells me about how the pressure induced by rankings has guided most recent higher education policies: “over the last ten years, the restructuring of the higher education landscape has met two objectives - political more than academic: to rise in international rankings and to give international visibility to research”. Thus, institutional and financial incentives such as the Programmes d'Investissements d'Avenir (2013) have encouraged movements to group together “centres of excellence” in teaching and research, which in particular allow higher education institutions to benefit from joint funding in the context of calls for research projects; and, in the long term, to weigh more heavily in the rankings. The circle is complete.

This is a heartbreak for institutions, which I clearly perceive after a few months of learning about the world of schools and universities.

On the one hand, higher education aspires to meet the growing expectations of students and society on the integration of environmental issues into campus life, teaching and research. The multiple interviews conducted with school heads and professors convinced me of their good faith. The following few examples illustrate this new dynamic. At Skema Business School, “the sustainable development component has been deployed on all dimensions over the last ten years”. emlyon is in the process of defining a raison d'être that will revolve around “the training of enlightened, responsible actors who are concerned with social and ecological challenges” - this will be the subject of a future article. Grenoble Ecole de Management also seeks to “go beyond training and research, to tackle the major challenges of the 21st century: the migration crisis, the fight against global warming, gender equality...” ESC Pau has completely redesigned its programs around the theme of the circular economy, based on the observation that the new generation of students “grew up with the idea that resources are not inexhaustible” and strongly demand “change and positive commitment”. The examples are as numerous as higher education institutions.

On the other side, however, is the reality of rankings, which is impossible to ignore since it guides the orientation choices of students as well as the professional choices of teacher-researchers. “If you don't answer the ranking questionnaires, you're on satellite. You are no longer invited to the table,” Loick Roche explains to me. When I ask him how to reconcile classification and environment, his answer is clear: “we don't reconcile the two strategies! and at the end of the day, we lose points. That's okay: I would rather lose a point in the rankings than lose what is in the direction of the common good. Tomorrow will prove us right.” There is therefore a very clear trade-off to be made for institutions, which are constantly caught in a noose.

School managers are all too aware of this gap, which they deal with on a daily basis. “We are in tension” admits Isabelle Huault. “Rankings are important in our environment and cannot be ignored. We have to align ourselves with certain important criteria.” Isabelle Huault explains to me that the school is of course attentive to “certain types of publications in major scientific journals recognized by the entire academic research community (...), or to student exit salaries”.

“It's a complicated equation” adds Alice Guilhon. “It's very hard to deal with these contradictions, but we know that things will change over time. Today, with the push for interdisciplinarity and CSR topics, we are beginning to see things that are wavering in the world of research. Journals are evolving, and we know that new journals will appear.”

What lasting solution to this eternal dilemma? Can we get out of this paradigm of all-powerful ranking? The directors of establishments I met recommend different paths to achieve the same result: less ranking, more environment.

The most radical of the schools, ESC Pau, made the choice to stop answering the national ranking questionnaires a few years ago. “This is not a new religious ban”, explains Youssef Errami, “but a lucid position on our identity that the rankings do not do justice to. We have chosen to remain a small school in terms of size; and our strength lies in the human dimension, the professionalization and the commitment of our students. If, tomorrow, new rankings take these dimensions into account, it is likely that we will participate.” A decision that is still a stain on the sector, but that makes perfect sense. For the director, it is time to stop giving such importance to rankings and to invest the time, money and energy of his institution elsewhere. And, proof that it is still possible to survive outside the rankings, school has never been better! “Today, we have a much better pool of students than before, who choose school because they are committed and they want to understand the circular economy as a playground.” Youssef Errami is proud of his school's decision, and confident in his future: “when you are sure of your choice and solid in your support, you succeed”, he concludes.

An approach also followed by Skema Business School, which decided not to participate in the Financial Times management master's ranking last year. In the midst of a pandemic, it seemed inappropriate to focus on school growth and student salaries. For Alice Guilhon, the observation is the same as for Youssef Errami: “it is a non-event!” she is happy. “It takes a bit of courage to take control of our destiny. But we no longer want to spend our time being evaluated by trivial criteria! The Financial Times questions revolve around the salary and its evolution, while at the same time, the students say that it does not matter to them...” The paradox is indeed glaring.

However, the world is not ready to do without school rankings. Even if the movement to boycott rankings became widespread in France, it would only represent a drop in the ocean of the global university sector! Isabelle Huault therefore advocates pragmatism: “we must act so that the criteria for rankings are transformed, evolving, for example, integrating the consideration of social and environmental issues into research and training, but in the meantime, we cannot ignore them”. How to participate in the transformation of ranking criteria? By integrating the accrediting organizations, Isabelle Huault explains to me. Hang on, the subject is getting technical. School accreditations are labels guaranteeing the quality of the school's pedagogy and research. These labels are universally used in national and international rankings. However, unlike rankings whose criteria are inflexible, school accreditation is based on a system of peer evaluation. Thus, by intervening on the committees that decide on the evaluation framework for schools, we can influence the elements valued by accreditation to integrate environmental criteria, and, ultimately, have these new criteria weigh in rankings based on accreditations. This is the path taken by Isabelle Huault: “to escape this tension, one of the solutions consists in integrating international associations to change the standards of reference and make things change. We are talking about lobbying here, in a good sense of the word.” And the movement is already under way: in recent years, EQUIS accreditations have included an entire chapter on the integration of social and environmental topics in schools.

It seems to me that the big movement is under way. To become widespread and international, it will require a lot of courage on the part of institutions. But the officials I met say they are confident and ready to make the risky decisions that will put them on the right side of history. After all, as Loick Roche reminds me, “humanity has held on because people are getting up and saying 'I don't agree'.” All they have to do is do the same thing, to trigger a collective movement.