According to the Times Higher Education Supplement's (THES) recent ranking of world universities, Beijing University ( the correct name is actually Peking University, but never mind) is the best university in Asia and 14th in the world.
Unfortunately, it is not. It is just another mistake by QS Quacquarelli Symonds, THES's consultants. Unless, of course, they have information that has been kept secret from everybody else.
In 2005, Beijing University was, according to THES, ranked 15th in the world. This was partly due to remarkably high scores for the peer review and the recruiter ratings. It also did quite well on the faculty/student section with a score of 26. In that year the top score on that part of the ranking was Ecole Polytechnique in Paris whose 100 score appears to represent a ratio of 1.3 students per faculty. It seems that QS derived this ratio from their datafile for the Ecole, although they also give other figures in another part of their page for this institution. Comparing the Ecole's score to others confirms that this was the data used by QS. It is also clear that for this measure QS was counting all students, not just undergraduates, although there is perhaps some inconsistency about the inclusion of non-teaching faculty. It seems then that, according to QS, Beijing University had a ratio of five students per faculty.
Here is the page from QS's web site with the 2005 data for Beijing University.
Datafile
Demographic
No. of faculty:
15,558
No. of international
faculty:
617
No. of students:
76,572
No. of international
students:
2,015
No. of undergraduates:
15,182
No. of
international
undergraduates:
1,025
No. of postgraduates:
13,763
No. of
international postgrads:
308
Financial
Average
undergrad course
fees:
USD$ 3,700
Average postgrad course fees:
USD$
4,700
Annual library spend:
USD$ 72,000
Source:
World University Research (QS & Times Higher Education Supplement)
Postgraduate Course List
For information on undergraduate
courses, please look out for thelaunch of TopUniversities.com in March
2006
Notice that it indicates that there are 76,572 students and 15, 558 faculty, which would give a ratio of 4.92, very close to 5. We can therefore safely assume that this is where QS got the faculty/student ratio.
But there is something wrong with the data. QS gives a total of 76,572 students but there are only 15,182 undergraduates and 13,763 postgraduates, a total of 28, 945. So where did the 46,000 plus students come from? When there is such a glaring discrepancy in a text it usually means that two different sources were used and were imperfectly synthesised. If we look at Beijing University's web site (it calls itself Peking University), we find this data.
Faculty
At present, Peking University has over 4,574 teachers, 2,691 of whom
are full or associate professors. Among the teachers are not only a number
of senior professors of high academic standing and world fame, but also a host
of creative young and middleaged experts who have been working at the forefront
of teaching and research
And this.
At present, Peking University has 46,074 students.
15,001
undergraduates8,119 master candidates3,956 doctoral candidates18,998 candidates
for a correspondence courses or study at the night school1,776 international
students from 62 countries and regions
QS's data were used for the 2005 ranking exercise. The information on Peking University's web site has no doubt been updated since then. However, it looks like QS obtained the numbers of undergraduates and post graduates from Peking University's site although they left out the 18,998 correspondence and night school students that the university counted.
According to the university's definition of students and teachers, the faculty student ration would be 10.07. Excluding correspondence and night school students but counting international students gives us a ratio of 6.31. The former ratio would probably be the correct one to use. THES's definition of a student is someone "studying towards degrees or substantial qualifications" and there is no indication that these students are studying for anything less. Therefore, it seems that the correct ratio for ratio for Beijing University should be around 10 students per faculty.
Looking at the reference work The World of Learning 2003 (2002) we find that Beijing University had 55,000 students and 4,537 teachers. Probably the data reported to this reference included several thousand students from research institutes or branch campuses or was simply an overstatement. The number of teachers is however, almost identical. But whatever the exact numbers, it is clear that QS made a serious mistake and this meant that the score for faculty/student ratio in 2005 was incorrect. Since it appears that a similar or identical ratio was used for this year's ranking as well, the ratio for 2006 is also wrong.
We still have the problem of where QS came up with the figure of 76,572 students and 15, 558 faculty on its web site. It did not come from Peking University.
Or maybe it did. This is from a brief history of Peking University on its site.
After the readjustment, Peking University became a university comprising
departments of both liberal Arts and Sciences and emphasizing the teaching and
research of basic sciences. By 1962, the total enrollment grew to 10,671
undergraduate students and 280 graduate students. Since 1949, Peking University
has trained for the country 73,000 undergraduates and specialty students,
10,000 postgraduates and 20,000 adult-education students, and many of them have become the backbones on all fronts in China.
There has evidently been a massive expansion in the number of postgraduate students recently. The figure of 73,000 undergraduates who ever completed studies at Peking University is close enough to QS's total of students to arouse suspicion that somebody may have interpreted the data for degrees awarded as that for current enrollment.
There is another possible source. There are several specialist universities in the Beijing area, which is one reason why it is rather silly of THES and QS to refer to Peking University as Beijing University. These include the Beijing Foreign Studies University, the Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, the Beijing University of Business and Technology and so on.
The sum total of students at these institutions, according to the World of Learning is 75,746 students and 12, 826 teachers. The first is very close to QS's figure and the latter somewhat so. A bit of double counting somewhere might have brought the number of teachers closer to that given by QS. I am inclined to suspect that the figures resulted from an enquiry that was interpreted as a request for information about the specialist Beijing universities.
So what about 2006? Wherever the numbers came from this much is clear. Using Yale as a benchmark for 2006 ( there are problems discussed already with top scoring Duke) it would appear that the ratio of 5 students per faculty was used in the latter year as well as in 2005. But according to the data on the university web site, the ratio should be around 10.
What this means is that Beijing University should have got a score for faculty/student ratio of 31 and not 69. I calculate that Beijing University's overall score, applying THES's weighting, dividing by Harvard's total score and then multiplying by 100, should be 57.3. This would put Beijing University in 28th position and not 14th. It would also mean that Beijing University is not the best in the Asia-Pacific region. That honour belongs to the Australian National University. Nor is it the best in Asia. That would be the National University of Singapore. Also Tokyo and Melbourne are ahead of Beijing University.
If there is a mistake in these calculations please tell me and I will correct it.
This is of course assuming that the data for these universities is correct. We have already noted that the score for Duke is too high but if there are no further errors (a very big assumption I admit) then Beijing should have a much lower position than the one assigned by QS. If QS have information from Beijing University that has not been divulged to the public then they have a duty to let us know.
In a little while I shall write to THES and see what happens.
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