Every year, thousands of prospective students scour the websites of top schools and universities in search of the magic key: the right label, the right accreditation, the right ranking. AACSB , EQUIS , the Shanghai Ranking , Times Higher Education – all these acronyms promise excellence. But what do they actually measure?
The answer is less reassuring than it seems. Accreditation is the official recognition that an institution complies with a set of predefined standards and procedures. Labeling, on the other hand, is the certification of conformity to quality criteria in specific areas (internationalization, professional integration, innovation, etc.).
These systems therefore primarily assess compliance with rules, not the actual performance of the institution. This shift is not insignificant.
The “paradox of conformity”
Compliant and efficient: these two qualities are not synonymous. An institution can show mediocre results while strictly adhering to all the procedures of an accreditation or label – for example, at the university level, the “HR Excellence in Research” ( HSR4R ) label of the European Commission which values institutions that have signed the “European Charter for Researchers” and the “Code of Conduct for the Recruitment of Researchers”, or the Sustainable Development and Social Responsibility Label DD&RS , launched in 2015 by a collective coordinated by France Universités and the Conference of Grandes Écoles.
Conversely, an innovative institution can deviate from required standards without necessarily offering lower quality education or an unsatisfactory societal impact.
Compliance would determine performance: this is the misleading shortcut that our research highlights.
What we call the “paradox of conformity” refers to this troubling phenomenon: the more labels and accreditations an institution accumulates, the less its actual performance – measured by student success, teaching quality or research impact – tends to improve .
For example, AACSB-accredited institutions optimize their compliance, not necessarily their services to students and society . According to a study of more than 2,300 students in twenty-four accredited business schools , 45% of students surveyed reported no significant improvement in their key skills – critical thinking, complex reasoning, and writing – during their first two years, and 36% after four years.
Risks of standardization and misuse
University rankings – whether it be the Shanghai Ranking, the Times Higher Education or the QS World University Rankings – amplify this paradox by adding several specific risks, which we document in a recent scientific publication .
The first risk is that the rankings are often unfounded. These rankings rely on a limited number of indicators—number of scientific publications, academic reputation, student-to-faculty ratio—which mechanically favor large, well-funded Anglo-Saxon universities. French universities, primarily state-funded and regional in scope, are structurally penalized.
Paradoxically, many of them continue to use these rankings as a compass, even though they objectively have little chance in this competition. They find themselves running a race whose rules were written for others. The League of European Research Universities (LERU), which brings together the best European universities, is clearly opposed to these rankings .
The second risk is standardization. By imposing the same criteria on all universities worldwide, these accreditations and rankings push institutions to become more similar, to the detriment of their unique characteristics. This phenomenon leads to the emergence of a “single ideal of a university” that corresponds to the reality of only a handful of global institutions.
Local universities (numerous in France and around the world), committed to student success and regional development, have little interest in sacrificing their fundamental missions to climb a few places in a world ranking or obtain international accreditation.
Third risk: deviations and misuse. When an indicator becomes a strategic objective, behaviors adapt to optimize it – not always ethically. Accreditation bodies offer consulting services to the institutions they evaluate, creating a clear conflict of interest.
Going beyond the appearance of performance?
Behind the façade of accreditations and rankings, the reality is often less rosy. National and international school and university assessments – such as the OECD’s PISA program or the surveys of the High Council for Evaluation of Research and Higher Education ( HCERES ) – suggest that the actual performance of pupils or students is stagnating , or even declining, in institutions that are nevertheless covered in distinctions .
Accreditations produce an “appearance of performance” : the institution seems successful because it complies, not because its students are making greater progress or its research is impacting society. This corresponds to a “decoupling” between compliance and performance, often facilitated by the “ceremonial” nature of accreditations and rankings.
However, the “institutional effect” on salaries upon graduation from university, or even from elite schools, is significantly reduced: it is primarily the individual profile of the student and the context of the job market that determine their integration. The reputation of the institution, built on rankings, accreditations, and labels, loses much of its significance at this level of analysis.
Criticizing rankings or accreditations is not, however, the same as arguing against university evaluation. Quite the contrary: public organizations have a duty to be accountable to their stakeholders for their activities. Mechanisms such as the HCERES , the ANR , and institutional accreditations already contribute usefully to these evaluations. But a relevant evaluation should be specific to the objectives of each institution, and not uniformly applied to organizations of very different natures, sizes, and missions.
The “paradox of conformity” described here is not limited to higher education. In many public organizations—hospitals, high schools, colleges, government agencies, local authorities—the proliferation of standards and accreditation or ranking procedures has become an end in itself, sometimes at the expense of the actual quality of service provided. The lesson is simple but essential: conformity does not necessarily equate to quality. Before choosing an institution—or placing your trust in it—it is worthwhile to look beyond the tree of accreditations and rankings to see the forest of reality.
Author Bio: Laurent Mériade is Professor of Management Sciences – Associate Professor – IAE – CleRMa at Clermont Auvergne University (UCA)
