News & Views item - August 2005 |
University Rankings for 2005 by the Institute of Higher Education, Shanghai Jiao Tong University. (August 16, 2005)
Continuing its annual release of rankings of the world's top 500 research universities begun in 2003, the Institute of Higher Education of Shanghai Jiao Tong University has just published its 2005 assessment. Included with the release is a 14 page critique "Academic Ranking of World Universities – Methodologies and Problems" by N.C. Liu and Y. Cheng originally published in Vol. 30, No 2., 2005 of Higher Education in Europe. In it the authors discuss "methodological problems including quantitative versus qualitative evaluation, evaluation of research versus education, variety of institutions, language of publications, selection of awards, and studying or working experience of award winners. Technical problems such as definition of institutions, name expression of institutions, merging and splitting of institutions, searching and attribution of publications are [also] discussed."
The world's top ten ranked universities and Australian universities ranked in the top 500:
World's Top Ten Ranked Universities |
1 Harvard University 2 University of Cambridge 3 Stanford University 4 University of California, Berkeley 5 MIT |
7 Columbia University 8 Princeton University 9 University of Chicago 10 University of Oxford
|
AUSTRALIA'S Top Ranked Universities |
|
82 University of Melbourne 101-152 University of Queensland 101-152 University of Sydney 153-202 University of New South Wales 153-202 University of Western Australia
203-300 Macquarie University |
203-300 University of Adelaide 301-400 University of Newcastle 401-500 Flinders University 401-500 LaTrobe University 401-500 Murdoch University 401-500
University of Tasmania |
Below are several tables and a chart given by Liu and Cheng:
In what might be considered an apologia by Liu and Cheng they write:
Education versus Research
Since different stakeholders have different expectations about quality, the quality of higher education institutions is not easy to compare internationally. It would be impossible to rank the quality of university education worldwide because of the huge differences of universities in the large variety of countries and the technical difficulties in obtaining internationally comparable data.
If one wants to construct a reliable ranking of world universities, the only possible ranking will be a comparative display of research performance. Therefore, the Ranking Group chose to rank research universities in the world by their academic or research performance based on internationally comparable data that everyone could check. No subjective measures were taken. No data is obtained from any kind of university reports.
Finally, Liu and Cheng also indicate some of the plans for future ranking efforts. "The Ranking Group are investigating the possibilities of providing lists of top universities with engineering (technology) or medical orientation, as well as the possibilities of ranking universities by broad subject areas such as social sciences, physical sciences, engineering and technology, life sciences and medicine."