As an associate professor at an Australian university who was educated at unranked universities in India, I find it disturbing that some universities are now using international university rankings to help assess graduate students for admission. In my view, this risks promoting and institutionalizing discrimination, and hence undermines global efforts to increase diversity in academia.

When I applied in 1998 to do a PhD at the University of Zurich, Switzerland, the university requested my degree-course syllabuses from India. My opportunities were not scuttled by the ranking of those universities. So I was shocked when one of my students showed me the applications section for master’s programmes at several premier institutions . These required applicants to give the ranking of the university where they studied as an undergraduate, for use as an assessment parameter.

Such ‘objective’ metrics could be viewed as a way to reduce the selection workload and avoid unconscious biases. But individuals should not be assessed through a group-based metric that reinforces stereotypes. And, given that university rankings are correlated with per capita gross domestic product (E. F. Tuesta et al. J. Data Inf. Sci. 4, 56–78; 2019), organizations also risk making the serious mistake of equating an applicant’s ability with regional and economic differences.