When U.S. News and World Report announced last month Vanderbilt ranked 18th among national universities, there was little discussion about the merits (or lack thereof) of this ranking. After all, Vanderbilt has found itself consistently within the "top 20" for a generation, so a tie with peer universities Emory and Notre Dame would probably arouse neither excitement nor disappointment.

Last week, Shanghai Jiao Tong University's Institute of Higher Education released its 2008 Academic Ranking of World Universities list, which ranked Vanderbilt 42nd academically and 34th for the top 100 North American and Latin American universities. Provost and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs Richard McCarty was reportedly "extremely pleased" by Vanderbilt's placement, saying that the ranking "reflects the hard work and dedication of our faculty, students and staff members as well as the distinction of our alumni."

McCarty's comments indicate that university administrators are paying attention to these rankings and that this particular placement is a positive development in Vanderbilt's mission to remain a world-class university. With the implementation of the Commons and the assurance that every new freshman class is the "best" freshmen class in Vanderbilt history, it would come as no surprise No. 42 is the result of a trend of increasingly better rankings on this list of the top 500 universities in the world.

In fact, Vanderbilt's academic ranking in 2008 is the worst in the last five years. In 2003, our university was ranked ten places higher at 32, which dropped to 38 for 2004 and 2005, and down again in 2006 and 2007 to 41. The trend has practically been in reverse to what casual observers would expect and Vanderbilt officials interested in university rankings would hope.

What accounts for this change? The two researchers from Shanghai Jiao Tong who compile the list supposedly use a mathematical formula based on a number of factors, including the number of Nobel Prize and Fields Medal winners among alumni and faculty, the frequency faculty are published in various journals, and the "per capita academic performance" of institutions. A Romanian researcher published in a 2007 edition of Scientometrics that the rankings made by the Shanghai Jiao Tong researchers were "irreproducible," echoing sentiments among many others about the nature of this and other university ranking systems.

But what if the rankings are solid, and Vanderbilt's slow decline over the past few years indicates that with all the advances, our university is falling behind the rest of the world? If this is the case, McCarty's words ring hollow. A relatively "good" ranking is still that, but are Vanderbilt students, alumni faculty, and administrators resting on their top 50 laurels while the rest of the world's leading universities are advancing at a better rate?

In all likelihood, the Academic Ranking of World Universities list is generated by a flawed system that fails to take into account so many unquantifiable aspects of a university's success. Vanderbilt's recent fall may mean that our administrators are setting different goals than the researchers at one Chinese university have in mind, and it may turn out that these goals are to our own benefit.

It would be refreshing, then, to hear Provost McCarty and other concerned university officials dismiss the rankings as an indicator of not much of anything. In terms of Vanderbilt's goals, its aspirations and its identity, it would be better for us to give a respectful nod to the Shanghai Jiao Tong researchers before ignoring the implications of a meaningless ranking.