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Louise Richardson, vice-chancellor of the University of Oxford has published an article in the Financial Times proclaiming that British universities are a national asset and that their researchers deserve that same adulation as athletes and actors. "Listening to the public discourse one could be forgiven for thinking that the British higher education system is a failure. It is not. It is the envy of the world." That is an unfortunate phrase. It used to be asserted that the National Health Service was the envy of the world. She cites as evidence for university excellence the Times Higher Education  World University Rankings which have three British universities in the world's top ten and twelve in the top one hundred. These rankings also, although she does not mention it here, put Oxford in first place. There are now, according to IREG , 21 global university rankings. One wonders why a world-class scholar and head of a world-class university would choose rankings that re...

An article by Andrew Wilks in The National claims that the position of Turkish universities in the Times Higher Education  (THE) world rankings, especially that of Middle East Technical University (METU) has been declining as a result of the crackdown by president Erdogan following the unsuccessful coup of July 2016. He claims that Turkish universities are now sliding down the international rankings and that this is because of the decline of academic freedom, the dismissal or emigration of many academics and a decline in its academic reputation. 'Turkish universities were once seen as a benchmark of the country’s progress, steadily climbing international rankings to compete with the world’s elite. But since the introduction of emergency powers following a failed coup against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in July 2016, the government’s grip on academic freedom has tightened. A slide in the nation's academic reputation is now indisputable. Three years ago, six Turkish institut...

Last November I noted that the USA was barely managing to hold onto its lead over China in scientific research as measured by articles in the Scopus database. At the time, there were 346,425 articles with a Chinese affiliation and 352,275 with a US affiliation for 2017. As of today, there are 395,597 Chinese and 406,200 US articles dated 2017. For 2018 so far, the numbers are 53,941 Chinese and 49,428 US. There are other document types listed in Scopus and perhaps the situation may change over the course of the year. Also, the United States still has a smaller population so it maintains its lead in per capita research production. For the moment.

In case you are wondering why the Indian media get so excited about the THE and QS rankings and not about those that are just as good or better such as Leiden Ranking, RUR or Nature Index, see this from the University Grants Commission. Note that it says "any time" and that only the Big Three rankings count for getting Assistant Professor jobs. "NEW DELHI:   University Grants Commission (UGC) has come up with, UGC Regulations 2018, which exempts PhD candidates from having NET qualification for direct recruitment to Assistant Professor post. This new draft regulation is known as Minimum Qualifications for Appointment of Teachers and Other Academic Staff in Universities and Colleges and Measures for the Maintenance of Standards in Higher Education. Further the Commission has also listed 'Ph.D degree from a university/ institution with a ranking in top 500 in the World University ranking (at any time) by Quacquarelli Symonds (QS), the Times Higher Education (THE) and Ac...

This article by Pervez Hoodbhoy from October 2016 is worth reading: "A recently released  report by Thomson-Reuters , a Canada based multinational media firm, says, “In the last decade, Pakistan’s scientific research productivity has increased by more than 4 times, from approximately 2000 articles per year in 2006 to more than 9000 articles in 2015. During this time, the number of Highly Cited Papers (HCPs) featuring Pakistan based authors increased tenfold from 9 articles in 2006 to 98 in 2015.” This puts Pakistan well ahead of Brazil, Russia, India, and China in terms of HCPs. As the reader surely knows, every citation is an acknowledgement by other researchers of important research or useful new findings. The more citations a researcher earns, the more impact he/she is supposed to have had upon that field. Research evaluations, through multiple pathways, count for 50-70 percent of a university’s ranking (if not more). If Thomson-Reuters has it right, then Pakistanis should be ...

This is an updating and revision of a post from a few days ago There appears to be no end to the craze for university rankings. The media in many parts of the world show almost as much interest in global university rankings as in the Olympics or the World Cup. They are now used to set requirements for immigration, chose research collaborators, external examiners, international partners and for marketing, public relations, and recruitment. Pakistan has not escaped the craze although it was perhaps a bit slower than some other places. Recently, we have seen headlines announcing that ten Pakistani universities are included in the latest Times Higher Education (THE) Asian rankings and highlighting the achievement of Quaid-i-Azam University (QAU) in Islamabad reaching the top 100. Rankings are unavoidable and sometimes they have beneficial results. The first publication of the research-based Shanghai rankings in 2003, for example, was a salutary shock to continental European universities ...

Times Higher Education (THE) has just announced the latest edition of its Asian rankings . Since the indicators are the same as the world rankings with adjusted weightings there was absolutely no suspense about who would be top. In case anybody still doesn't know it was the National University of Singapore. The really interesting part of the rankings is the citations indicator, field- and year-normalised, based on Scopus, with fractional counting only for papers with more than 1,000 authors. Here are some of the superstars of Asian research. On the left is the citations rank and the score for citations. On the right in brackets is the score for Research comprising research reputation, publications per faculty, and research income. To achieve a score in the seventies, eighties or nineties  for citations with minimal research reputation, very few publications and limited funding is remarkable. 1st. 99.1. Babol Noshirvani University of Technology (15.3) 2nd. 92.0 King Abdulaziz Unive...

The magazine Spiked is descended from Living Marxism although some think it is now more libertarian than socialist. It has just published the latest edition of its free speech university rankings . These are not actually rankings but a classification or a rating, since they just divide UK universities into three groups. They have been subjected to mockery from sections of the academic blogosphere, including WONKHE ,  that might be justified on technical grounds. This is, however, such an important topic that any sort of publicity has to be welcomed. Universities are divided into three categories:  RED;  "A students’ union, university or institution that is hostile to free speech and free expression, mandating explicit restrictions on speech, including, but not limited to, bans on specific ideologies, political affiliations, beliefs, books, speakers or words." AMBER;  " A students’ union, university or institution that chills free speech and free expression through...

The Webometrics rankings perform the invaluable function of ranking 27,000 plus universities or entities claiming to be universities around the world. Also, their Excellence indicator identifies those  institutions, 5,776 this year, with any claim to involvement in research. Consequently, it has often been used in unofficial national rankings in countries, especially in Africa, where very few places can make it into the top 500 or 1,000 universities included in the better known international rankings. However, there seems to be a universal law that when a ranking becomes significant it will have unintended and perverse consequences. In the UK we have seen massive inflation in the number of first and upper second class degrees partly because this is a n element in popular national rankings. Sophisticated campaigns can also produce  significant gains in the QS academic opinion survey which has a 40% weighting  and a few hundred strategic citations can boost the most unlike...