The Sydney Morning Herald has an article by Steven Schwartz, Vice-Chancellor of Macquarie University. He begins by arguing that university rankings cannot capture the full complexity of a large modern university. A good point, although it would have been more convincing had it been made before rather than after Macquarie's spectacular fall in the THES-QS rankings.
Schwartz goes on to say that:
Although those who work in universities know the pace of change is glacial, university rankings can change dramatically. For example, the Times Higher Education Supplement in Britain dropped Macquarie more than 80 places down the ranks in one year - front-page news in this newspaper. Was the previous ranking incorrect? Is the present one more accurate? The answer in both cases is no.
The changed ranking resulted from a decision by the publication to reduce the weight given to international students, so that many universities with large international enrolments dropped down the rankings. The prestigious London School of Economics dropped from 17 to 59. By omitting mention of this change in method, the Herald's report on November 9 produced more heat than light.
This is an extraordinary claim. There has been no change whatsoever in the weighting given to international students in the THES-QS rankngs. It is five per cent this year just as it has been since 2004.
Macquarie has fallen in the rankings for two reasons. First it fell from 93rd position in the survey of academic opinion to 142nd (among the overall top 400 universities). This could be because QS, the consultants who collect the data for the rankings, did not allow respondents to vote for their own institutions this year or because the number of respondents from Australia was lower.
Second, in 2006 Macquarie was in first place for international faculty, meaning that QS, must have thought that at least half of Macquarie's faculty were international. This year the rankings have Macquarie in 55th place for international faculty. This represents, according to the QS website (registration required), a figure of 25 % for international faculty.
Dr Schwartz would be well advised to find out how QS received incorrect information about international faculty in 2006.
The international students section had nothing at all to do with Macquarie's fall.
Dr Schwartz would probably claim that he has better things to do than read about the methodology of the rankings. I would entirely sympathise with him although perhaps he should be more careful when writing about them or hire an assistant that would read them carefully.
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