The "Social and Health Care" Department of the Ludwigshafen University of Applied Sciences - formerly the Protestant University of Applied Sciences for Social and Health Care - will not participate in the so-called 'University Ranking' of the Center for Higher Education Development (CHE) and the associated data surveys in the future. We are thus renewing and reaffirming the resolution unanimously passed by the Convention of the then still independent Ludwigshafen University of Applied Sciences for Social and Health Care in January 2008. At the same time, we call on the CHE to end its discriminatory practice of not mentioning Departments and entire universities that boycott the ranking in its university statistics. Instead of concealing the existence of the critics, we demand that they be listed there with the addition "Boycott of the CHE ranking". The CHE's current approach not only means that first-year students in particular receive incomplete and biased information. It also means that there is a lack of important guidance with regard to the choice of subject and place of study. By concealing its critics, the CHE also distorts competition between universities and abuses its monopoly position in a way that is questionable from a regulatory and legal perspective.

Justification

The reasons for our continued boycott are essentially the same as those on which the 2008 resolution was based. The one-sided university policy orientation of the CHE has not changed. It conveys a concept of education that is primarily based on market economy principles, but not on criteria of social usefulness. We reject this. In addition, methodological doubts about the representativeness of the data collected for the ranking and the validity of its interpretation have still not been dispelled. When the CHE was founded in 1994, the Bertelsmann Foundation and the German Rectors' Conference (Hochschulrektorenkonferenz - HRK) set the goal of modernizing universities in Germany to make them more market-oriented and competitive. Public corporations that administer themselves are to become 'entrepreneurial universities' that compete for quality and reputation according to the regulations of market-mediated competition. They should develop their performance in a competitive environment, using their resources
economically and shaping their own organization autonomously.
In practice, this means Growing intransparency of study opportunities and conditions and inefficient competition on the education market among universities. Democratic structures within academic self-administration are increasingly being replaced by centralized management and directorial structures. So-called university councils, which are usually disproportionately staffed with external representatives from companies and business lobbies, take on central management functions, while the elected self-governing bodies are left to manage their tight budgets and compensate for the effects of a lack of staff.

In this march towards the 'entrepreneurial university', the CHE university ranking plays a central and high-profile role. Universities and degree programs are ranked according to quality criteria in a hierarchical order that is defined primarily by the CHE itself in the course of selecting and interpreting data. These then become 'arguments' in the competition for the 'best' researchers, teachers and students - and for money.

In this way, the CHE ranking helps to create and reinforce the differences in quality that are supposedly being investigated: Negatively rated universities and degree programs run the risk of experiencing declining numbers of applicants, receiving (even) less funding as a result - especially in the case of tuition fees - then dropping further again in the next ranking, etc. - an ominous process. The goal of creating comparably good conditions for students at all university locations
is being sacrificed to the crude idea of 'education as a commodity'. In the end
there will be a few 'excellently' equipped universities for a few on the one hand and many on the other, who are mainly concerned with managing their destitution and poor study conditions, from which a majority of students and teachers suffer.
Methodologically, the lack of transparency in the CHE's approach to data collection is particularly to be criticized. For example, there is a lack of information about the sample compositions that are relevant for assessing the representativeness of the results (e.g. number or socio-demographic structure of the respondents). It remains unclear
whether or how evaluation results are included in the ranking that cannot be assumed to be representative, for example due to a low number of cases.

Case number problems can occur in particular if parts of the standardized CHE questionnaire cannot be related to the specifics of a university or degree program. In the event of such fitting problems, the CHE only provides the alternative categories "I cannot judge" and "not available". It remains unclear how such answers are included in the assessment. What is clear, however, is that CHE does not provide a real analysis of the causes of qualitative differences between universities. This would presuppose that factors such as the different staffing and financial resources of the universities, their size or the composition of the student body are also considered. Critically socialized students are very likely to judge evaluations more critically than others, with whom they are then compared. In this way, good education can be turned against itself.