Those Controversial University Rankings Are Under Scrutiny Again. (August 24, 2007)

    In this week's Science Martin Enserink has had a look at those university rankings and writes: "This year... presidents of more than 60 liberal arts colleges refused to participate in a key component of the U.S. News & World Report rankings, published last week. The rankings, they wrote, 'imply a false precision and authority' and 'say nothing or very little about whether students are actually learning at particular colleges or universities.' Last year, 26 Canadian universities revolted against a similar exercise by Maclean's magazine."

None the less the rankings are here to stay and in fact Martin Enserink found that in Britain decisions to employ by some firms depends at least to some extent on a graduate's university's ranking according to "Ellen Hazelkorn of the Dublin Institute of Technology, adding that funding organizations, philanthropists, and governments are paying increasing attention as well."

There is a consensus that comparing the teaching quality of universities of different nationalities is to say the least a daunting task but determining research prowess seems more assessable.

The ranking methods devised by four of the leading systems is shown in the chart. The University of Leiden has a different approach from the other three in that "produces rankings of European universities based purely on publication and citation data and presents them as not one but four tables. Each uses a different variable; the yellow ranking, for instance, looks at the total number of papers produced, whereas the green ranking (billed as the "crown indicator") is based on papers' impact, adjusted so that it doesn't reward bigger institutions or those working in fields in which scientists cite each other more often. The results aren't as simple as a single list, Moed concedes, but they do provide a more complete picture."

From Science August 24, 2007. SOURCES: U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT, TIMES HIGHER EDUCATION SUPPLEMENT, SHANGHAI JIAO TONG UNIVERSITY, CWTS

 

 

In fact there is agreement among the "rankers" as to who occupy the top 10-15 positions even though they get shuffled around; after that rankings tend to diverge.

 

Science also did a comparison of the Shanghai Jiao Tong University and the Times Higher Education Supplement rankings based on the number of universities a nation could boast to be in the top 100.

 

In his "News Focus" piece Martin Enserink writes: "[C]ontroversial are peer-review surveys, in which academic experts judge institutions. THES, for instance, assigns a whopping 40% to the opinions of more than 3700 academics from around the globe, whereas the judgment of recruiters at international companies is worth another 10%. But when researchers from the Centre for Science and Technology Studies (CWTS) at Leiden University in the Netherlands compared the reviewers' judgments with their own analysis--based on counting citations, an accepted measure of scientific impact--they found no correlation whatsoever. "The result is sufficient to seriously doubt the value of the THES ranking study," CWTS Director Anthony van Raan wrote in a 2005 paper."                

 

 

 

 

Undoubtedly comes 2008 the preening and sneering will be on again but from an Australian viewpoint the considerations that matter are that the nation keeps its best minds and attracts from overseas outstanding researchers. Just shuffling those who do stay from one institution to another doesn't really do the nation a whole lot of good.