From The Students' Room 3

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From AfghanistanBananistan

I am intriged about the LSE's ranking.

TBH, it does not really matter where a university ranks in the world in relation to other global universities, it just concerns me when UK universities have odd rankings amongst their own. No one would complain if LSE came 4/5th in the UK and 86th in the world, or Warwick came 8th in UK and 240th in the world.

The RAE claims that LSE has the highest proportion of world leading research in the UK, and is in the top 3 in every type of analysis of the results (often tied with Oxford). The RAE may not be perfect, but for LSE to suddenly drop in the THES ranking (esp citations) seems really shocking, and perhaps wrong.

Afterall, someone from THES wrote a few months back that LSE ranking in 66th was 'clearly a big mistake'. This was when THES clearly stated that citations hindered social science and arts institutions. You mean to tell me that LSE ranks 66th (80th in this yers QS ranking), when citations are weighted against social sciences, yet LSE drops to 86th when citations not weighted to disadvantage social science institutions?

I guess my main point is that in the QS ranking LSE has ranked in the top 5 in the world every year for social sciences, with citations the key element of the ranking. How come LSE can have the 4th best citation count in the social sciences, yet when taken account in an overall ranking, where citations are normalised, it has such a low citation count in the THES ranking? I understand Warwick, for it may rank 44th for humanities, but it has to take into account all its own faculties which may drag it down - yet LSE only has social sciences.

I find it hard to conceptualise that Sussex and York universities have more pervasive research throughout ALL their departments than just LSE for social science. Bear in mind that LSE, as a specialist instituon, is one of (probably the biggest) social sicence dept in the world, with more specific social science researchers that anywhere else. Therefore, how come its research is not cited more? What are the 50 odd fellows of the British academy doing, and should they not have been appointed if their research is not influential.

In short, does THES not think that something is up with their methodology, just as they admitted last year. Just because some said there is evidence of the world being flat, does not make it true. I find it hard to believe that the university that created many fields in the social sciences and has won nearly a quarter of all nobel prizes in economics, can rank so badly for its citations score? Aferall, can the fellow social science researchers who voted LSE the 6th best in the world for infoluence IR and is the only uni to compete with the US economics depts in all economics world rankings, be so wrong?

The same logic applies to Warwick vs. Dundee and Lancaster.

If a ranking of the world's best ever football players only had Maradonne at number 20 and Pele at 15, wouldn't the raking lose credibility. You could rank them purely by influence measured by the number of goals scores. Pele/Maradonna would not rank that well, but we them as the best players because we have seen them with our own eyes.

P.S I dont even go to LSE.