sutton092

Times Higher Education (THE) has published an article by Devin Stewart that refers to a crisis of Japanese universities. He says: "After Japan’s prestigious  University of Tokyo  fell from its number one spot to number seven in  Times Higher Education’s  Asia University Rankings  earlier this year , I had a chance to travel to Tokyo to interview more than 40 people involved with various parts of the country’s education system. Students, academics and professionals told me they felt a blow to their national pride from the news of the rankings drop. I found that the  THE  rankings result underscored the complex problems plaguing the country’s institutions of higher learning. " If Japanese academics and university administrators do actually believe that the fall of the University of Tokyo (aka Todai) in the THE Asian rankings is an indicator of complex problems and if they do feel that it is a blow to their national pride then there is indeed a crisis i...

University rankings have become extremely influential over the last few years. This is not entirely a bad thing. The initial publication of the Shanghai rankings in 2003, for example, exposed the pretensions of many European universities revealing just how far behind they had fallen in scientific research.  It also showed China how far it had to go to achieve scientific parity with the West. Unfortunately, rankings have also had malign effects. The THE and QS world rankings have acquired a great deal of respect, trust, even reverence that may not be entirely deserved. Both introduced significant methodological changes in 2015 and THE has made further changes in 2016 and the consequence of this is that there have been some remarkable rises and falls within the rankings that have had a lot of publicity but have little to do with any real change in quality. In addition, both QS and THE have increased the number of ranked universities which can affect the mean score for indicators from...

Over the last few years, elite universities have become increasingly concerned with their status in the global rankings. A decade ago university heads were inclined to ignore rankings or to regard them as insignificant, biased or limited. The University of Texas at Austin, for example, did not take part in the 2010 Times Higher Education  (THE) rankings although it relented and submitted data in 2011 after learning that other US public institutions had done so and had scored better than in the preceding THES-QS rankings It seems that things are changing. Around the world there excellence initiatives, one element of which is often improving the position of aspiring universities in international rankings, are proliferating. It should be a major concern that higher education policies and priorities are influenced or even determined by publications that are problematic and incomplete in several ways. Rankings count what can be counted and that usually means a strong emphasis on researc...

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