Fake Rankings from Nigeria?

Although the Webometrics rankings, based mainly on web activities, receive little attention from the good and the great among the world 's university administrators they do serve the important function of providing some sort of assessment of over 20,000 universities or entities that claim to be universities. They get to places where the market leaders, Shanghai Ranking, THE and QS, cannot go.

As a result, the media in several African countries have from time to time published local rankings based on Webometrics that do not appear all that different from what would be expected from a ranking based on research or reputation.

For example, the current top five in Webometrics are:

1. University of Ibadan
2. Covenant University
3. Obafemi Awolowo University
4. University of Nigeria
5. University of Lagos.

The Nigerian press have in the last few years announced the results of rankings supposedly produced by the country's national university commission. In 2016 Nigerian Scholars reported that the NUC had produced a ranking with the top five being:

1. University of Ibadan
2. University of Lagos
3. University of Benin
4. Obafemi Awolowo University
5. Ahmadu Bello University.

Now we have this published in The Nation .Professor Adamu Abubakar Abdulrasheed, Executive Secretary of the NUC, has announced that the rankings attributed to the NUC were fake and that the commission had not published any ranking for several years.

This is  a bit strange. Does that mean that nobody on the commission noticed that fake rankings were being published in its name until now? There may be more to the story.

For the moment, it looks as though Nigeria and other countries in Africa may have to continue relying on Webometrics.

What use is a big endowment?

Quite a lot. But not as much as you might expect.

The website THEBESTSCHOOLS has just published a list of the world's 100 wealthiest universities, as measured by the value of their endowments. As expected, it is dominated by US institutions with Harvard in first place. There are also three universities from Canada and two each  from the UK, Australia, Japan, Singapore and Saudi Arabia

There are of course other elements in university funding but it worth looking at how this ranking compares with others. The top five are familiar to any rankings observer, Harvard with an endowment of 34.5 US$ followed by Yale, the University of Texas system, Stanford and Princeton. Then there is a surprise, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia in sixth place with an endowment of 20 billion.

Some of the wealthy universities also do well in other rankings. Stanford, in fourth place here, is second in the overall Shanghai rankings and seventh for publications, and fifth in the  Leiden Ranking default publications indicator. It does even better in the QS employer survey indicator, where it is ranked second.

There are, however, several places that are very wealthy but just don't get anywhere in the global rankings. Williams College, the University of Richmond, Pomona College, Wellesley College, Smith College, and Grinnell College are not even given a value in the QS employment indicator, or the Leiden or Shanghai publication indicators. They may of course do well in some other respects: the University of Richmond is reported by the Princeton Review to be second in the US for internships.

On the other hand, some less affluent universities do surprisingly well. Some California schools seem to among the best high-performers.  Caltech is 47th here but 9th in the Shanghai rankings where it has always been first in the productivity per capita indicator. Berkeley is 65th here and fifth in Shanghai. The University of California San Francisco, a medical school, is 90th here and 21st in Shanghai.

Overall there is an association between endowment value and research output or reputation among employers that is definitely positive but rather modest. The correlation  between endowment and Shanghai publication score is 0.38, between endowment and number of publications 2012-15 (in the Leiden Ranking) 0.46, and between endowment and the QS employer survey score 0.40. The relationship would certainly be higher if we corrected for restriction of range.

Having a lot of money helps a university produce research and build up a reputation for excellence but it is certainly not the only factor involved.

Here is the top ten in a a ranking of the 100 universities by papers (Leiden Ranking) per billion dollars of endowment.

1. University of Toronto
2. University of British Columbia
3. McGill University
4. University of California San Francisco
5. University of Melbourne
6. Rutgers University
7. UCLA
8. University of Florida
9. University of California Berkeley
10. University of Sydney.

When it comes to research value for money it looks as though Australian and Canadian universities and US state institutions are doing rather better than the Ivy League or Oxbridge.

Ranking News: Chinese Think Tank Ranking

From the China Daily

The Global Think Tank Research Center affiliated with Zhejiang University of Technology has released a ranking of domestic university think tanks.

The first three places go to the National Academy of Development and Strategy at Renmin University of China, the national School of Development at Peking University, and the National Conditions Institute at Tsinghua University.

Ranking News: US State K-12 Rankings

Education Week has produced a ranking of states according to three criteria: Chance for Success, School Finance and K-12 Achievement. Overall, the top state is Massachusetts, which is also first for Chance for Success and K-12 Achievement. Pennsylvania is top for school finance. Overall the worse performing state is Nevada while New Mexico is worst for Chance for Success, Idaho for School Finance, and Mississippi for K-12 achievement.

California is an interesting case. Overall it is below average and gets a grade of C-. For K-12 its grade is D+. The state has some of the best universities in the world. Typically three or four of them will be found in the top ten of any global ranking. So why is the performance of primary and secondary schools so poor? Could it be that Education Week has identified the future of California's tertiary sector?

Ranking News: US News online program rankings

U.S. News Releases 2018 Best Online Programs Rankings

Ranking news: Jordan cancels classification of universities

The Higher Education Accreditation Commission of Jordan has cancelled its proposed  classification of universities. Apparently, academics were  opposed because it was based on international rankings and ignored "“the reality of the universities and the damage to their reputation”.


Source

Jordan Times