sutton092

Every six months TOP500 publishes a list of the five hundred most powerful computer systems n the world. This is probably a good guide to the economic, scientific and technological future of the world's nation states. The most noticeable change since November 2015 is that the number of supercomputers in China has risen dramatically from 108 to 171 systems while the USA has fallen from 200 to 171. Japan has fallen quite considerably from 37 to 27 and Germany and the UK by one each. France has added two supercomputers to reach 20. In the whole of Africa there is exactly one supercomputer, in Cape Town. In the Middle East there are five, all in Saudi Arabia, three of them operated by Aramco. Here is a list of countries with the number of computers in the top 500. China 171 USA 171 Germany 32 Japan 27 France 20 UK 17 Poland 7 Italy 6 India  5 Russia 5 Saudi Arabia 5 South Korea 4 Sweden 4 Switzerland 4 Australia 3 Austria 3 Brazil 3 Netherlands 3 New Zealand 3 Denmark 2 Finl...

The big ranking brands seem to be suffering from a prolonged fit of megalomania, perhaps caused by the toxic gases of Brexit and the victory of the deplorables. The "trusted" THE, led by the "education secretary of the world", has just made a foray into the US college ranking  market, published a graduate employability ranking and is now going to the University of Johannesburg for a BRICS Plus Various Places summit. Meanwhile the "revered" QS, creator of "incredibly successful ranking initiatives"  also appears to be getting ready for bigger and better things. They are advertising for a Ranking Manager who will be " a suitably accomplished and inspirational leader", and possess " a combination of analytical capability, thought leadership and knowledge of the global higher education landscape" and "  ensure an environment of Passion, Integrity, Empowerment and Diversity is maintained" and be " (h)ighly analytica...

The UK is proposing to add a Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) to the famous, or infamous, Research Excellence Framework (REF). The idea is that universities are  to be judged according to their teaching quality which is to be measured by how many students manage to graduate, how satisfied students are with their courses and whether graduates are employed or in postgraduate courses shortly after graduation. There are apparently going to be big rewards for doing well according to these criteria. It seems that universities that want to charge high tuition fees must reach a certain level. Does one have to be a hardened cynic to suspect that there is going to be a large amount of manipulation if this is put into effect? Universities will be ranked according to the proportion of students completing their degrees? They will make graduating requirements easier, abolish compulsory courses in difficult things like dead white poets, foreign languages or maths, or allow alternative methods...

The October 8th post has been republished in University World news NORTH KOREA Some advice on how to become a world-class university Richard Holmes 21 October 2016   Issue No:433

Rankings have become a major weapon in the struggle of universities around the world to get their fair share or what they think is their fair share of public money. The Times Higher Education (THE) world and regional rankings are especially useful in this regard. They have a well known brand name, occasionally confused with the "Times of London", and sponsor prestigious summits at which rankers, political leaders and university heads wallow together in a warm bath of mutual flattery. In addition, the THE rankings are highly volatile with significant methodological changes in 2011, 2015 and 2016. Another source of instability is the growing number of ranked universities. The scores used for calculating the various indicators in these rankings are not raw but standardised scores derived from means and standard deviations. So if there is an influx of new universities then mean scores are likely to change and consequently the processed scores of those above or below the mean. Th...

Kim Jong-un has declared that Kim Il-sung University must become a world-class institution . No doubt there will be chuckles at Oxford,  Anglia Ruskin University, the University of Iceland and the Free University of Bozen - Bolzano but it could be surprisingly easy if being world class means getting a high place in the rankings. After all, there are now quite a few places appearing in the various global and regional tables that would have been just as surprising just a few years ago. First, I should mention that there already is a ranking in which Kim Il-sung University is listed: a ranking of international influence as measured by Google's ranking of search results where the institution is 254th. Here is my plan for North Korea to become world class in just a few years. 1. Offer adjunct professorships to 150 researchers and ask them to  put the university as a secondary affiliation. Maybe they can come and visit Pyongyang sometimes but that is not really necessary. In a litt...

On September 16th I made some predictions about the latest Times Higher Education (THE) world rankings and summit at Berkeley. My record is not perfect but probably a bit better than the professional pollsters who predicted a hung parliament at the last UK elections, a crushing defeat for Brexit and humiliation for Donald Trump in the Republican primaries. I predicted that Trump would not be invited to give a keynote speech. I was right but it was a pity. He would certainly have added a bit of diversity to a rather bland affair and he does seem to have a talent for helping unpromising beginners into successful careers, something that the current fad for value added ranking is supposed to measure. I also said that UC Berkeley as the summit host would get into the top ten again after falling to thirteenth last year. This has now become a tradition at THE summits. I suspect though that even THE will find it hard to get King's College London, the 2017 world summit host, into the top ...