Nobody understands “the state of affair” (a philosophical term) of History, Philosophy, Theology in Australia from The Times Higher Education (THE) Supplement’s world rankings of universities. THE has just released the disciplinary measures in their ranking series. It is as erroneous as all ranking systems are; because the statistics used for the rankings cannot account for qualitative factors which changed into the clearer ideas of achievements in any scholarly field. Human beings produce the outputs and no statistics can touch the comprehensive semantics in the human factors. No sets of numbers can touch humanised knowledge.
Thus, look at the featured image of ‘the 2023 Australian History-Philosophy-History Ranking’. We know that Charles Sturt University has better reputation in theology than those institutions ranked higher, yet it is towards the bottom of the list. Flinders University also does not deserve such a low ranking. Deakin University is ranked moderately higher and the reputation is still as good as the rest. Griffith University is higher than Flinders and Charles Sturt, but I see no reputational reasons for Griffith to be higher, especially in the loss of the Multi-Faith Centre.
How is it possible to measure ‘philosophy’ across the universities? Reputationally, I do not doubt that all academic philosophers in the schools do their best with complex subjects. Otherwise, if there are great degrees of weaknesses then one has to severely question the employment practices of the universities. In such a diverse sets of subjects the factors are human, not in the numbers, and if diverse sets of subjects are not taught why the higher ranking?
History is clearly in decline as demonstrated by Martin Crotty, Frank Bongiorno, and Paul Sendziuk. The history schools in Australia have struggled to be comprehensive, which I have demonstrated in my work. So, is ranking on numbers be possible?
The only office-holders who know the numbers and the human factors who give legitimacy to the numbers game of rankings are those who foolishly deny the inconvenient truth.
Neville Buch
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