Something is Awry

A comment by the President of the University of Alberta.

"This year, Times Higher Education partnered with Thompson
Reuters to compile a new ranking, which was released a few days ago. This
ranking is also based on objective and subjective measures. A school’s final
score is based on an aggregate of teaching, research reputation/income,
citations/research influence, industry income and international mix. Academics are surveyed to rate teaching and research quality, a precarious exercise since teaching is difficult, if not impossible, for academics to assess at institutions other than their own. At first blush, this ranking appears to capture a broader range of indicators and does a good job of identifying the top 20. We applaud the University of Toronto for being named among the top 20; this is very good for Canada and Canadian universities.

However, when one looks under the hood, beyond the top 20 universities, the new ranking has some very peculiar outcomes that does not pass the “reasonableness test.” Alexandria University in Egypt received one of the highest scores for citations while also receiving the lowest score for research reputation. By comparison #1 Harvard received near perfect scores on both measures. Logic would suggest that the aggregate score for research reputation should correlate with the score for citations, which measure research influence. However, in spite of the vast discrepancy between its scores, Alexandria, which has never been on any other international ranking, came in ahead of many top universities. Furthermore many universities considered by peers as among the best do not appear in the top 200.
Something is awry.