Ranking CountriesUniversitas 21, a global alliance of research intensive universities, has produced a ranking of higher education systems. The US is top but the UK performs less well in tenth place. Muslim countries do particularly badly. What might be interesting would be to compare resources with output and produce an index of efficiency."A nation’s economic development depends crucially on the

Oxford and CambridgeFollowing on from the last post, can anyone explain why Cambridge can't produce Prime Ministers and Oxford can't produce comedians, at least not professional ones?

And now for something a little bit differentTimes Higher Education has announced that it will publish a ranking of new universities (less than fifty years old).The Times Higher Education 100 Under 50 will – as its name suggests – rank the world’s top 100 universities under the age of 50. The table and analysis will be published online and as a special supplement to the magazine on 31 May, 2012

Deja Vu All Over AgainMalaysia's love-hate affair with international rankings has taken another twist. The official target now is get one university in the top 50 and three in the top 100 in the QS rankings. That basically means that a Malaysian university will have to be the equal of New South Wales, Tsinghua or Warwick.Last year Universiti Malaya got into the top 500 in the Shanghai ARWU

What have I done?I was recently in a public library somewhere in Southeast Asia. While browsing around I discovered that access to this blog was blocked because of  "other adult material". I thought that perhaps someone was upset with university rankings in general, which is entirely understandable, but the THE, QS, ARWU, Webometrics and HEEACT sites were all unblocked.My best guess is that the

Is this what they meant by diversity?On December 1st. of last year I commented on proposals that the US News Law School Rankings should include an indicator for diversity.Such proposals are based on the increasing globalisation of the world economy and the need to understand other cultures. It is obvious that middle class white Americans who support abortion, gay marriage, affirmative action,

Student Experience SurveyFrom Times Higher Education, the top ten British universities from the students' viewpoint.1.   Dundee2.   Loughborough3    Sheffield4.   Oxford5.   Cambridge6.   East Anglia7.   Southampton8.   Aberystwyth9.   Glasgow10.  Leeds

Thomson Reuters in Trouble? The online financial newsletter StreetAuthority has published a list of 12 companies that are at risk because of a looming debt problem.Among them is Thomson Reuters who, among other things, run the Web of Science database and provide the data for the Times Higher Education World University Rankings. Their data is also used by Shanghai Jiao Tong University's rankings

LSE overtakes Oxford in British RankingThe Complete University Guide has just published its rankings of British universities. According to Brendan O'Malley in University World News.It is the first time since 2000 that Oxford and Cambridge have not shared the top two spots – in that year Imperial College London knocked Oxford into third place.In separate listings for the leading universities and

London Met UpdateIt seems that the proposal to ban alchohol from one campus was not quite what was reported. Apparently the vice-chancellor was looking for an excuse to save money. The latest report is that Muslim students are disassociating themselves from his plan.

Another Quality Initiative Every so often education bureaucrats come up with bright ideas to boost quality and raise standards and proclaim their faith that students and teachers at all levels can perform as well as anybody anywhere. A recent example is the decree by the the Director General of Higher Education at the Indonesian Education and Culture Ministry, that in order to graduate

QS Paper Here are the links to a paper and presentation slides by Ben Sowter of QS that discusses the spin-offs: subject, regional and best student city rankings.

What about the Kindergarten Rankings?US News will be publishing the Best High Schools rankings on May 1st.

Does Not ComputeLondon Metropolitan University seems to be getting rather desperate in its attempts to attract students. On the one hand:"A London university is considering establishing alcohol-free zones on its campuses because so many of its students consider drinking to be immoral.Professor Malcolm Gillies, vice-chancellor of London Metropolitan University, said the selling of alcohol was an

Opening the Black BoxI have just seen an article by Mu-Hsuang Huan of National Taiwan University published by Research Evaluation, an Oxford University Press journal. Here is the abstract:"In the era of globalization, the trend of university rankings gradually shifts from country-wide analyses to world-wide analyses. Relatively high analytical weightings on reputational

The Euro-RankingsThe U-Multirank project has slowly crept past the feasibility study stage. While any attempt to undermine the triopoly of the big three global rankers, ARWU (Shanghai), QS, Times Higher Education, is welcome, it does seem to be taking a long time. One wonders whether it will get going before the Eurozone disintegrates. Still the project does have its defenders."Jordi Curell,

The Ranking BusinessIn INSIDE HIGHER ED, Kris Olds comments on the growing commercialisation of university rankings.

US Faculty Salaries The Chronicle of Higher Education features a report from the AAUP on faculty salaries, along with data on student faculty ratio. Predictably, Harvard, where the average fill professors gets $198,000 per annum, is at the top.If anyone ever has the time, it ought to be  possible to work out the productivity of faculty with regard to publications, citations , students taught and

News from AustraliaThere is now a website MyUniversity that allows anyone to compare Australian public universities for  attributes such as staff qualifications, student to staff ratio, graduate employment and so on.Of course, the value of the site will be little better than the quality of the information uploaded. Perhaps someone could take a look at the site and see how accurate the data

Ranking News: QS World University  RankingsLike many others, I have just received an invitation to take in the QS academic survey which contributes 40 per cent to their World University Rankings. If I understand it correctly, QS now get the majority of their respondents from the Mardev mailing lists. That means that subscribing to an academic journal is sufficient qualification to rank the

Ranking News: US NewsRobert Morse has announced that US News has begun to collect data for the 2013 US college rankings."We recently started collecting the statistical data that will be used for the 2013 edition of our college rankings, which will be published later this year. Data collection for the three U.S. News statistical surveys—the main one, financial aid, and finance—began on March

The University Challenge RankingsThe  quiz show, University Challenge, provides a plausible supplement to the established British league tables. If we award 2 points for winning and one for being runner up (I confess this is from Wikipedia) then we get this ranking:1.      Oxford                                                             392.      Cambridge

Comments on the THE Reputation Rankings  From Kris Olds at GlobalHigherEdThe 2012 Times Higher Education (THE) World Reputation Rankings were released at 00.01 on 15 March by Times Higher Education via its website. It was intensely promoted via Twitter by the ‘Energizer Bunny’ of rankings, Phil Baty, and will be circulated in hard copy format to the magazine’s subscribers. As someone who thinks

The THE Reputation RankingsTimes Higher Education has produced its third reputation ranking based on a survey of researchers published in ISI indexed journals. The top ten are:1.  Harvard2.  MIT3.  Cambridge4.  Stanford5.  UC Berkeley6.  Oxford7.  Princeton8.  Tokyo9.  UCLA10. YaleThis does not look all that dissimilar to the academic survey indicator in the  2011 QS World University Rankings.

Law School RankingsAnyone interested in the current arguments about American law school rankings might visit the blog of Lawyers against the Law School Scam.

University Ranking in PakistanUniversity World News has an article on the ranking of Pakistani universities by the country's Higher Education Commission (HEC). According to Ameen Amjad Khan:According to the Higher Education Commission (HEC) ranking, Islamabad’s Quaid-e-Azam University tops 136 public and private sector institutions, followed by the Pakistan Institute of Engineering and Applied

International Patent FilingThe World International Property Organization has issued a report on the filing of patents. The top university is the University of California followed by MIT, University of Texas, Johns Hopkins and the Korea Institute of Advanced Technology.

O, My Felony is RankThe Social Science  Research Network has just produced a paper by Morgan Cloud and George Shepherd, 'Law Deans in Jail'. Notice the absence of a question mark. Here is the abstract: A most unlikely collection of suspects - law schools, their deans, U.S. News& World Report and its employees - may have committed felonies by publishingfalse information as part of U.S. News'

Best Student CitiesQS has just announced its Best Student Cities ranking. The criteria are performance in the QS World university rankings, student mix, quality of living, employer activity and affordability.To be included a city must have a population of at least 250,000 and at least two institutions in the QS rankings That explains why Oxford and Cambridge are not on the list but Cairo and

run mr jwhit

run mr jwhit

Light Posting AheadFor the next few weeks posting will be light as I am attending to family matters.

Eight years of ranking: What have we learned?My post at the University World News World Blog can be viewed here.

University Ranking by Academic PerformancePerhaps too much attention is given to the big three international rankings -- ARWU (the Shanghai Rankings), the QS World University Rankings and the Times Higher Education World University Rankings.So, here is what I hope will be the first of  a number of posts about the other rankings that have appeared recently.The University Ranking of Academic

Think Tank Ranking There seems to be little that cannot be ranked these days. In the UK there are primary school league tables although nowhere in the world is there a kindergarten ranking. Yet.The University of Pennsylvania has produced a report on think tanks. These are apparently flourishing everywhere: even Andorra has one.Here are the top five world wide:1.  Brookings Institution, USA2. 

Guest PostToday's post is by Masturah Alatas. It is in response to a comment in the Kuala Lumpur New Straits Times by James Campbell that begins:"Any discussion of Malaysian tertiary educational policy needs to take into account the needs of national development in a specific and historical context. Recent debates in regard to the competitive position of Malaysian higher education globally is

Worth ReadingRanking in Higher Education: Its Place and Impact by Jan Sadlak. Originally appeared in the Europa World of Learning 2010.

The Power of Small NumbersMy attention has just been drawn to the citations per paper indicator in the 2011 QS Asian University Rankings. In first place is University of Santo Tomas in the Philippines, a very good school in some ways but not usually considered as a research rival to Hong Kong or Tokyo. It seems that UST's success was the result of just one much cited medical paper of which just

FindThe BestThis is a site that has just come to my attention. There is a great variety of rankings of things like antivirus, snowboards and fertility clinics and also of colleges and universities, including business, law and medical schools.The colleges and universities ranking is US only and includes a "smart ranking" combining  statistical information with the Forbes, US News and ARWU (

The Happiest University in Britain?According to the Daily Telegraph it's St Mary's University College Belfast. I thought Belfast was in Ireland but then again I did not do geography in secondary school.

Update: The Journal BubbleJeffrey Bealle has a list of predatory journals. Note  that some of the comments dispute the inclusion of some journals.

The Journal BubbleInside Higher Ed has a piece by Philip Altbach about the proliferation of dubious academic journals.Clever people have figured out that there is a growing demand for outlets for scholarly work, that there are too few journals or other channels to accommodate all the articles written, that new technology has created confusion as well as opportunities, and (finally) and

Research Fraud in the UKAN article in Times Higher Education by Jack Grove indicates that there is a large amount of research fraud going on in UK universities, although the comments raise questions about the validity of the study. I am wondering if there is any comparative international data available.

Primary School League TablesThe craze for rankings continues unabated. There is now a League Table for English primary schools. The league tables show the percentage of 11-year-olds in each school reaching Level 4 – the standard expected for their age group – in both English and maths at primary school. Officially, this means they can spell properly, start to use grammatically

Who says college isn't worth it? There is a web site called SeekingArrangement which puts sugar daddies and sugar babies in touch with another. Apparently, large numbers of college graduates are signing up in the latter category, perhaps because of increasing difficulties in paying off student loans.There is now a ranking of the top 20 colleges among sugar baby sign ups. I have doubts about the

Online Education RankingsUS News has announced its rankings of American online education programs. There are six categories: Bachelor's, Business, Education, Engineering, Info tech and Nursing. Within each category there are rankings for faculty credentials and training, student services and technology, student engagement and assessment and, except for bachelor's, admissions selectivity. For

The end of the university as we know it?MIT has already been putting its course materials online for anyone to access free of charge. Now they are going a step further."MIT today announced the launch of an online learning initiative internally called “MITx.” MITx will offer a portfolio of MIT courses through an online interactive learning platform that will:organize and present course material to

How Did I Miss This?The blog Registrarism has discovered a fascinating article, published in 2002 in Higher Education Quarterly, that compares university league tables (that is British university rankings) with the football (soccer to Americans) league tables.