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.