Comments on the THES Top 200 Universities

Looking at the list of 200 universities, the most striking thing is the remarkable changes in the position of many universities. The Sorbonne has risen from 305 to 200, Wollongong from 308 to 196, Aberdeen from 267 to 195, Tubingen from 260 to 170, Ulm in Germany from 240 to 158. Meanwhile, Queensland University of Technology has fallen from 192 to 118, Purdue from 61 to 127, Helsinki from 62 to 116, and the Korean Advanced Institute of Science and Technology from 143 to 198.

Altogether, 41 universities went up or down 50 places or more.

This is, to say the least, very strange. If the scores for 2005 and 2006 were both valid, then there would be very little change. A change in policy on the admission of international students or recruitment of international faculty would take a few years to produce a change in overall numbers. A massive increase in research funding would take even longer to produce more research papers, let alone an increase in the citations of those papers.

Some changes may have occurred because of research errors or corrections of errors, "clarification of data" as THES likes to put it. In other cases, universities may have have done a bit of rearranging of data about numbers of faculty and students.

However, most of the changes are probably the result of changes in the score on the peer review. Unless THES and QS are more forthcoming about how they conducted this survey we can only assume that rises and falls on the peer review reflect nothing more than QS's distribution of their survey, with a lot of forms this year being sent to Britain, continental Europe and the US. This in turn is probably influenced by the international ebb and flow of MBA recruitment. However, we will have to wait until the thirteenth to be certain about this.

Here is something interesting from the Cambridge Evening News

CAMBRIDGE is the best university in the world, say academics.
It comes second
in the Times Higher Educational Supplement's (THES) world ranking of
universities - but made it into first place when given a score by
academics.
Last year Cambridge came third in the overall rankings, 14
percentage points behind Harvard, but this year it is only narrowly beaten by
the US university.
Oxford made third place and Yale fourth.
But academics
said Cambridge was the best university, followed by Oxford and then
Harvard.
John O'Leary, editor of The THES, said:
"These results show
academics think Cambridge is the world's best university, with Oxford close
behind. On this measure they both come ahead of Harvard.
"In addition,
Cambridge is popular with employers. Its score on quantitative criteria such as
international appeal and staff/student ratio provides numerical corroboration of
its excellence."

So, according to the academic peer review, which is 40 % of the total score, Cambridge and Oxford both beat Harvard this year. In 2004, however, Cambridge was 19 % behind Harvard and in 2005 4 %. Oxford was 16 % behind in 2004 and 7 % behind in 2005. A rise of this magnitude in the popularity of Oxford and Cambridge over two years is simply not possible if the same reviewers were on the panel in these three years or if comparable, objectively selected respondents were polled. It would be possible though if QS sent a larger number of forms this year to UK universities, particularly to Oxbridge.