sutton092

Every so often newspapers produce lists of universities that excel in or are noteworthy for something. Here is a list of ten universities that, according to Times Higher Education (THE), have achieved remarkable success in the world of global research. In a time of austerity when the wells of patronage are running dry, they should be an example to us all: they have achieved a massive global research impact, measured by field-normalised citations, despite limited funding, minimal reputations and few or very few publications. The source is the THE World and Asian rankings citations indicator. 1. First on the list is Alexandria University in Egypt,  4th in the world and a near perfect score for research impact in 2010-11. 2. In the same year Hong Kong Baptist University was tenth for research impact, ahead of the University of Chicago and the University of Hong Kong. 3. In 2011-12 Royal Holloway, University of London, was in 12th place, ahead of any other British or European in...

Ranking experts are constantly warning about the grim fate that awaits the universities of the West if they are not provided with all the money that they want and given complete freedom to hire staff and recruit students from anywhere that they want. If this does not happen they will be swamped by those famously international Asian universities dripping with funds from indulgent patrons. The threat, if we are to believe the prominent rankers of Times Higher Education (THE), QS and Shanghai Ranking Consultancy, is always looming but somehow never quite arrives. The best Asian performer in the THE world rankings  is the National University of Singapore (NUS) in 24th place followed by Peking University in 29th. The QS World University Rankings have NUS 12th, Nanyang Technological University 13th and Tsinghua University 24th.  The Academic Ranking of World Universities published in Shanghai puts the University of Tokyo in 20th place and Peking University in 71st. These ranking...

Times Higher Education (THE) has produced a "snapshot" ranking  of Arab universities extracted from its World University Rankings. There has been no change in the indicators or their weighting. Only 28 universities are included which raises questions about how suitable THE's methodology is for regions like the Middle East and North Africa. This is an improvement over a remarkable MENA snapshot that THE did in 2015 which put Texas A and M University Qatar in first place by virtue of one half-time faculty member who was listed as a contributor to a multi-author, multi-cited CERN paper. The top five universities this time are King Abdulaziz University (KAU), Saudi Arabia,  King Fahad University of Petroleum and Minerals, Saudi Arabia,  King Saud University, Saudi Arabia, Khalifa University of Science, Technology and Research, UAE, and Qatar University. The top three places are held by Saudi institutions. So how did they do it? According to an article by a THE editor for t...

Miguel Antonio Lim, The building of weak expertise: the work of global university rankers University rankers are the subject of much criticism, and yet they remain influential in the field of higher education. Drawing from a two-year field study of university ranking organizations, interviews with key correspondents in the sector, and an analysis of related documents, I introduce the concept of  weak expertise . This kind of expertise is the result of a constantly negotiated balance between the relevance, reliability, and robustness of rankers’ data and their relationships with their key readers and audiences. Building this expertise entails collecting robust data, presenting it in ways that are relevant to audiences, and engaging with critics. I show how one ranking organization, the Times Higher Education (THE), sought to maintain its legitimacy in the face of opposition from important stakeholders and how it sought to introduce a new “Innovation and Impact” ranking. The paper an...

In the  previous post I did a bit of fiddling around with correlations and found that UK universities' scores for the international student indicator in the QS world rankings did not correlate very much with beneficial outcome for students such as employability and course completion. They did, however, correlate quite well with spending per student. That would suggest that British universities want lots of international students because it is good for their finances. What about international faculty? Comparing the scores for various outcomes with the QS international faculty score shows that in most cases correlation is low and statistically insignificant. This includes course satisfaction and   satisfaction with teaching ( Guardian University League Tables ),  and completion and student satisfaction  ( THE TEF simulation ) . There is, however, one metric that is positively, albeit modestly, and significantly associated with international students and that is the Re...

There has been  a big fuss in the UK about the status of international students. Many in the higher education  industry are upset that the government insists on including these students in the overall total of immigrants, which might lead at some point to a reduction in their numbers. Leading twitterati have erupted in anger. Phil Baty of THE has called the government's decision "bizarre, bonkers & deeply depressing" and even invoked the name of the arch demon Enoch Powell in support. So are international students a benefit to British universities? I have just done a quick correlation of the scores for the international students indicator in the QS World University Rankings to see whether there is any link between positive outcomes for students and the number of international students. This is of course only suggestive. QS provides scores for only 51 universities included in their world top 500 and the situation might be different for other countries. Another caveat...