Macquarie Update

Here is a little bit about Steven Schwartz, Vice-Chancellor of Macquarie University, that I just came across at Wikipedia.

Schwartz was named one of the 100 highest cited researchers in his field and he received many recognitions including a World Health Organisation
Fellowship, a NATO fellowship and the Australian Academy of Science-Royal
Society (London) Exchange Fellowship. He was elected by his peers to the
Academy of Social Sciences and he was elected Morris Leibovitz Fellow at the University of Southern California. Schwartz is a Fellow of the Royal Society of the Arts, the Australian Institute of Company Directors, and the Australian Institute of
Management. He was a visiting Fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford and he won
the Brain Research Award of the British Red Cross Society. He was
elected the first President of Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society in
Australia and was awarded the distinguished Career Scientist Award by the
National Institutes of Health. He served on the editorial boards of many
scientific journals and was a fellow of many learned societies.

I assume that Wikipedia is not in error and that Dr. Schwartz does in fact have a highly distinguished research and academic record.

It is therefore very surprising that Dr. Schwartz, has apparently shown an extreme degree of carelessness. He has stated in the Sydney Morning Herald (SMH) that Macquarie University's fall in this year's THES-QS rankings was because there was a change in the weighting that the rankings gave to the international students section. He also said that this was the reason for LSE's fall.

At the risk of being repetitive, let me point out again that the weighting of the international students section has nothing to do with Macquarie's fall. It was five per cent in 2004 , 2005 and 2006 and in 2007. LSE fell because the consultants began using Z scores this year. This is a common statistical technique that has the effect of smoothing out scores. LSE fell, not because of the any change in the weighting but because other universities lagging behind on this measure got more points this year and therefore overtook LSE on the overall ranking.

I will repeat again that Macquarie fell in the rankings firstly because of a poor showing, like several other Australian universities, on the "peer review". This might have resulted from fewer responses from Australian universities this year or from respondents not being allowed to vote for their own universities or a combination of the two.

There was also a fall in its placing for international faculty. The overall effect of this limited by the small weighting given to this criterion.

There was a fall in the citations per faculty section matched by a similar rise in the student faculty ratio. These two changes, which effectively cancelled each other out, might have been caused by a decrease in the reported number of faculty which would have a good effect on citations per faculty and a bad effect on the student faculty ratio.

It is also possible that the high score for international faculty in 2006 might also have resulted from a low reported figure for total faculty.

I would like to ask a few questions.

Did Dr Schwartz read the THES' s description of its methodology?

If he did, did he really misunderstand the description?

Dr Schwartz is reported to get a bonus of A$100,000 when Macqaurie rises in the rankings. Why did this not encourage him to read about the methodology of the rankings carefully?

Why did SMH allow Dr Schwartz to publish an article in which he criticised the the newspaper for not referring to this change of rankings, when there is in fact no such change?

Will SMH point out to Dr Schwartz that there was no change in the weuighting and request an apology from him?

Will Dr Schwartz investigate how QS gave Macquarie such a high and presumably incorrect score for international faculty in 2006?