Maybe QS were on to something

I recently posted on the implausibility of Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) putting the National University of Singapore and Nanyang Technological University ahead of Yale and Columbia in the latest World University Rankings. This remarkable achievement was largely due to high scores for the reputation surveys and international students and faculty, none of which have very much validity.

But recent events at Yale suggest that maybe QS know something. Students there have been excited not about the persecution of religious minorities in Myanmar and the Middle East, the possibility of war in Eastern Europe, terrorist attacks in Paris and Beirut or even the decay of public services in the US but by a sensible comment from an administrator about halloween costumes that appeared to presume too much about their maturity and intelligence.

It seems that the Master of Silliman College was insufficiently hysterical about  some cautious and diffident remarks about free speech by his wife and Assistant Master. A viral video showed him being screeched at by a student.

Later, there was some of the usual grovelling about failing students.

The students certainly have been failed. Their parents should have spoken to them about the right way to treat domestic servants and the university administration should have told them to grow up.

But the most interesting question is what is going to happen when Yale undergraduates become faculty and the current faculty become administrators. How can they possibly hope to compete with graduates, teachers and researchers from the rigorous and selective university systems that are developing in East and Southeast Asia?