Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Global-Rankings Ping Pong

Ben Wildavsky has an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education about the competition between Times Higher Education and QS over this year's university rankings. It is actually called Global-Rankings Smackdown! but the smackdown bit is rather exaggerated and the exclamation mark is unnecessary. There are some well informed and incisive comments on recent developments in international university ranking, including the divorce between THE and QS.

He concludes:

Will a redemption narrative help Times Higher earn credibility for its new rankings? Perhaps. It should certainly be applauded for its openness to criticism, and for all it is doing to inform the public about its next moves in what its editor characterizes, with appropriate caution, as “a decent first step” at improvement. But ultimately, debating tactics notwithstanding, the global league tables will be judged on their merits. As the wars over league tables continue, the next rankings season should be well worth watching.


I am not entirely sure about how much THE, or more accurately their new partners, Thomson Reuters are doing to inform the public about what they are doing. At the moment there are some things we know about the QS survey that we do not know about Thomson Reuters' -- number of forms sent out, response rate, number of responses from individual countries. Still, all that could change within a few weeks and it did take QS a couple of years before they gave out anything beyond the bare minimum about their survey.

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