Research-driven classification and ranking in higher education: an empirical appraisal of a Romanian policy experience

In this paper we investigate the problem of university classification and its relation to ranking practices in the policy context of an official evaluation of Romanian higher education institutions and their study programs. We first discuss the importance of research in the government-endorsed assessment process and analyze the evaluation methodology and the results it produced. Based on official documents and data we show that the Romanian classification of universities was implicitly hierarchical in its conception and therefore also produced hierarchical results due to its close association with the ranking of study programs and its heavy reliance on research outputs. Then, using a distinct dataset on the research performance of 1385 faculty members working in the fields of political science, sociology and marketing we further explore the differences between university categories. We find that our alternative assessment of research productivity—measured with the aid of Hirsch’s (Proc Natl Acad Sci 102(46):16569–16572, 2005)h-index and with Egghe’s (Scientometrics 69(1):131–152, 2006)g-index—only provides empirical support for a dichotomous classification of Romanian institutions.