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The retreat from intelligence as a qualification for entrance into American universities continues. We have already seen the University of Chicago join the ranks of test-optional colleges and it seems that for many years Harvard has been discriminating against prospective Asian students who supposedly lack the qualities of grit, humour, sensitivity, kindness, courage, and leadership that are necessary to study physics or do research in economics. There has been a lot of indignation about the implication that Harvard should actually think that Asians were uniquely lacking in humour and grit and so on. But even if Asians were lacking in these qualities that is surely no reason to deny them admission to elite institutions if they have the ability to perform at the highest intellectual level. Sensitivity, kindness and a sense of humour etc are no doubt desirable but they are highly subjective, culture specific, difficult to operationalise and almost impossible to assess with any degree of ...

My article in University World News can be accessed here . Comments can be made at this blog. GLOBAL How should rankings assess teaching and learning? Richard Holmes 20 July 2018   Issue No:515

The University of Chicago has gone test-optional . Prospective students will no longer be required to submit their SAT or ACT scores when applying, although probably most will continue to do so. Many colleges in the US have done this already and candidates who choose not to submit test scores are admitted on the basis of high school grades, perceived personal attributes, recommendations, essays, extra-curricular activities and/or membership of a valued group. Most  of these,  but not all,  appear to be small liberal arts colleges. Chicago is the first major US research university to do so but is unlikely to be the last. A common justification is that dropping the test requirement allows universities to recruit students from disadvantaged or underrepresented groups who may not do well on standardised tests.  Perhaps it does but  there is also a less altruistic reason. G oing test-optional  might help Chicago to maintain or even improve its position in the U...

Should Malaysian universities celebrate rising in the QS Rankings? My article in the Kuala Lumpur  New Straits Times  can be accessed  here . You can post comments at this blog.

On July 11th Times Higher Education (THE) will publish their new European university rankings . These are supposed to be about teaching and seem to give priority to students as consumers of higher education. They are similar to THE's Japanese and US rankings with four "pillars": Engagement (five indicators derived from the European Student Survey), Resources (three indicators), Outcomes (three indicators) and Environment, which consists entirely of the gender ratio of faculty and students. THE are presenting these rankings as an innovative pilot project so they might contain interesting insights lacking in other international rankings. But it looks like THE will follow previous practice and only give scores for the four pillars and not for the component indicators. This would drastically reduce their value for students and other indicators since it would be difficult or impossible to figure exactly what has contributed to a high or a low score for any of the pillars. Alt...