sutton092

I am feeling a bit embarrassed. In a recent post I wrote about the Shanghai Rankings (ARWU) being a bit boring (which is good) because university ranks usually do not change very much. But then I noticed that a couple of Australian universities did very well in the latest rankings . One of them, the Australian National University (ANU), has risen a spectacular (for ARWU) 31 places over last year. The Financial Review   says that "[u]niversity scientific research has boosted the position of two Australian universities in a global ranking of higher education providers."  The ranking is ARWU and the rise in the ranking is linked to the economic contribution of Australian universities, especially those in the Group of Eight. So how well did Australian universities do? The top performer, as in previous years, is the University of Melbourne, which went up a spot to 38th place. T wo other universities went up a lot in a very un-Shanghainese way, ANU, already mentioned, from 69th to ...

A paper by Ludo Waltman and Nees Jan van Eck asks what users of the Leiden Ranking are interested in. There's some interesting stuff but for now I just want to look at where the users come from. The top ten countries where visitors originate are: 1.  USA 2.  Australia 3.  Netherlands 4.  UK 5.  Turkey 6.  Iran 7.  South Korea 8.  France 9.  Germany 10. Denmark. The authors consider the number of visitors from Australia, Turkey, Iran and South Korea to be "quite remarkable." Let's look at other signs of interest in rankings. Here are the top countries for respondents to the 2018 QS academic survey: 1.  USA 2.  UK 3.  Malaysia 4= Australia 4= South Korea 4= Russia 7= Italy 7= Japan 9= Brazil 9= Canada And here are the top ten countries for visitors to this blog: 1. USA 2. UK 3. Russia 4. France 5. Germany 6. Ukraine 7. Canada 8. Malaysia 9. Australia 10. Singapore. The three countries on all three lists are UK, USA and Australi...

International university rankings can be a bit boring sometimes. It is difficult to get excited about the Shanghai rankings, especially at the upper end: Chicago down two places, Peking up one. There was a bit of excitement in 2014 when there was a switch to a new list of highly cited researchers and some universities went up and down a few places, or even a few dozen, but that seems over with now. The Times Higher Education (THE) world rankings are always fun to read, especially the citations indicator, which since 2010 has proclaimed a succession of unlikely places as having an outsize influence on the world of research: Alexandria University, Hong Kong Baptist University,  Bilkent University, Royal Holloway University of London, National Research University MEPhi Moscow, Tokyo Metropolitan University, Federico Santa Maria Technical University Chile, St George's University of London, Anglia Ruskin University Cambridge, Babol Noshirvani University University of Technology Iran. I...

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.