There was a jacenko of self-promotion yesterday as universities announced their improving achievements in the Times Higher  Education rankings

Understandably so, the news was close to universally good. As the Times Higher Education organisation points out, “on average, Australian universities improved on 12 of the 13 metrics underpinning the ranking over the past year … . The higher-ranking positions are primarily driven by their improved citation impact scores, as well as excellent scores for research environment and international outlook.”

But THE also mentions; “many Australian universities fall behind international rivals when it comes to teaching reputation scores.”

This may, suggests a learned reader wise in performance metrics, explain why universities that trumpet rankings to the heaven go quiet when the student-survey based Quality Indicators for Learning and Teaching outcomes are announced.