Ranking Arab Universities

The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region has been slower than some others to jump on the rankings train but it seems to be making up for lost time. In addition to the standard world rankings there are now MENA (or Arab world or region) university rankings from Quacquarelli Symonds (QS), Times Higher Education (THE), US News (USN) and Webometrics.

Taking methodologies developed to rank elite western universities and applying them to regions with different traditions, resources and priorities is no easy task. For most Arab universities, research is of little significance and attaining international prominence is something that only a few places can reasonably hope for. But there is still a need to differentiate among those institutions that are focussed largely on teaching.

Alex Usher of HESA has spoken of the difficulty of using metrics based on research, expenditure, and student quality. I agree that institutional data is not very helpful here. However, measures of social influence such as those in the Webometrics and QS Arab rankings, and peer and employer surveys, used by USN and QS, might be useful in assessing the teaching quality, or at least the perceived quality, of these universities.

If rankings are to be of any use in the MENA region, then they will have to find ways of comparing selectivity, student quality and social impact. There is little point in forcing regional universities into the Procrustean bed of global indicators designed to make fine distinctions within the Russell Group or the Ivy League.

This is pretty much what THE have done with the 2018 edition of their Arab World Rankings, which is simply extracted from their world rankings published in 2017. These rankings are very research orientated and include measures of income, doctoral degrees and internationalisation. They also give a disproportionate weighting to citations, supposedly a measure of research impact or research quality.

Here are the top five in the recent editions of the various Arab Region/MENA rankings.

THE
1.   King Abdulaziz University, Saudi Arabia
2.   Khalifa University, UAE
3.   Qatar University
4.   Jordan University of Science and Technology
5.   United Arab Emirates University (UAEU)

QS
1.    American University of Beirut, Lebanon
2.    King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, Saudi Arabia
3.    King Saud University, Saudi Arabia
4.    King Abdulaziz University
5.    United Arab Emirates University

USN
1.    King Saud University
2.    King Abdulaziz University
3.    King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), Saudi Arabia
4.    Cairo University, Egypt
5.    American University of Beirut

Webometrics
1.    King Saud University
2.    King Abdulaziz University
3.    King Abdullah University of Science and Technology
4.    Cairo University
5.    American University of Beirut

Webometrics and USN are identical for the first six places. It is only when we reach seventh place that they diverge: UAEU in Webometrics and Ain Shams, Egypt, in the USN rankings. Webometrics measures web activity with a substantial research output indicator while USN is mainly about research with some weighting for reputation.

The list of top universities in QS, which uses Webometrics data as one indicator, is quite similar. QS does not count research universities such as KAUST, third place in the WEbometrics and USN rankings but otherwise it is not too different from the other two.

The THE rankings have a disproportionate weighting for research impact supposedly measured by field and year normalised citations. Officially, it is 30 % but in fact it is much higher because of the regional modification that gives a big bonus to universities in countries with a low citation impact score.

For example, KAU's score for citations amounts to nearly 60% of its total score. Other universities in THE's top twenty have citation scores higher, sometimes much higher, than their research scores.

In effect, the THE Arab rankings are mostly about citations, very often in a limited range of disciplines. They can be easily, sometimes accidentally, gamed and can lead to perverse consequences, such as recruiting highly cited researchers or searching for citation-rich projects that have little relevance to the region or country.

More evidence of the rise of China

A regular story in the ranking world is the rise of Asia, usually as a warning to stingy Western governments who fail to give their universities the money that they desperately need to be world-class.

Sometimes the rise of Asia turns out to be nothing more than a methodological tweaking or a bug that allows minor fluctuations to be amplified. Asia often turns out to be just East Asia or sometimes even just Shanghai and Peking. But it still remains true that China, followed perhaps by South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and Hong Kong, is steadily becoming a scientific superpower and that the USA and Europe are entering a period of relative decline.

This blog has already noted that China has overtaken the West in supercomputing power and in the total output of scientific publications.

David Goldman of Asia Times, writing in Breitbart, has reported another sign of the rise of China: the number of doctorates in STEM subjects is well ahead of the USA. And we should remember that many of those doctorates are Chinese nationals or of Chinese descent who may or may not remain in the US.

“What I’m concerned about is the fact that China is testing a railgun mounted on a navy ship before the United States is and that China has the biggest quantum computing facility in the world about to open,” said Goldman. “It probably has more advanced research in quantum communications than we have, and they’re graduating twice as many doctorates in STEM fields than we are. That’s what really frightens me.”

There are, of course, some areas where US researchers reign supreme such as gaming research and gender, queer and trans studies. But I suspect that is not something that will help the US win the coming trade wars or any other sort of war.

Anglia Ruskin University sued for awarding Mickey Mouse degrees

Pok Wong, or Fiona Pok Wong, a graduate of Anglia Ruskin University (ARU) in Cambridge, wants 60,000 pounds for a breach of contract and fraudulent misrepresentation and false imprisonment after a protest at the graduation ceremony.

ARU has appeared in this blog before following its spectacular performance in the research impact indicator in the THE world rankings. It has had the common sense to keep quiet about this rather quirky result.

Ms Wong has claimed that her degree in International Business Strategy was just a "Mickey Mouse" degree and that the teaching was of poor quality with one lecturer coming late and leaving early and sometimes even telling the students to self study in the library. She is reported to claim that "since graduating ... it has been proven that the degree ... does not play a role to help secure a rewarding job with good prospects."

It seems that in 2013 she had a job as a Financial Planner with AIA International so her degree from ARU did not leave her totally unemployable. Between 2013 and 2016 she studied for Graduate Diplomas in Law and Paralegal Legal Practice at BPP University College of Professional Studies, which does not appear in the national UK rankings but is ranked 5,499th in the world by Webometrics.

I doubt that the suit will succeed. It is of course regrettable if ARU has been lax about its teaching quality but whether that has much to do with Ms Wong not getting the job she thinks she deserves is debatable. ARU is not among the elite universities of England and its score for graduate employment is particularly bad. It is not a selective university so the question arises why Ms Wong did not apply to a better university with a better reputation.

The university would be justified if it pointed out that publishing photos proclaiming "ARU sucks" may not be the best way of selling yourself to potential employers.

If she does succeed it would be a disastrous precedent for British universities who would be vulnerable to every graduate who failed to get suitable employment or any employment at all.

But the affair should be a warning to all universities to be careful about the claims they make in advertising their products. Prospective students should also take a critical look at the data in all the indicators in all the rankings before banking in their tuition fees.

Salaries, rankings, academic quality, racism, sexism, and heightism at Renssalaer Polytechnic Institute

From time to time the question of the salaries of university administrators resurfaces. Last August the issue of the salary of the yacht and Bentley owning  vice-chancellor of the University of Bolton in the UK received national prominence. His  salary of GBP 260,500, including pension contributions and healthcare benefits, seemed to have little relationship to the quality of the university which was not included in the QS and THE world rankings and managed a rank of 1,846 in Webometrics and 2,106 in University Ranking by Academic Performance (URAP). A poll in the local newspaper showed 93% of respondents opposed to the increase.

A previous post in this blog reported  that vice chancellors salaries had no statistically significant relationship to student satisfaction in the UK although they had more than average faculty salaries and the number of faculty with teaching qualifications.

This issue has cropped up in the US where it has been noted that the highest paid university president is Shirley Ann Jackson of the Renssalaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI).

She has come under fire for being overpaid, autocratic and allowing RPI to go into academic decline. Her supporters have argued that her critics are guilty of residual racism, sexism and even heightism.  A letter in the Troy Times Union from David Hershberg uses the Times Higher Education (THE) world rankings to chastise Jackson



"RPI was always in the top 5 of undergraduate engineering schools. Now it's No. 30 in U.S. News and World Report's latest rankings. Despite the continued loss of stature of my alma mater, the school's president, Shirley Ann Jackson, is the highest paid president of a university by far and on some 10 other boards that supplement her $7 million salary and other compensation. This is RPI's rankings the last eight years in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings: 2011, 104; 2012, 144; 2013, 174; 2014, 181; 2015, 226-250; 2016, 251-300; 2017, 251-300; and 2018, 301-350. Further, U.S. News & World Report has RPI at No. 434 globally and No. 195 engineering school. This warrants a change at the top. This is what matters, not gender or race."

It seems that for some people in the USA international rankings, especially THE's,  have become the measure of university excellence..

First, it must be said that the THE World University Rankings are not a good measure of university quality.  These rankings have seen dramatic rises and falls in recent years. Between 2014-15 and 2015-16, for example, Middle East Technical University (METU) in Ankara fell from 85th place to the 501-600 band while many French, Japanese, Korean and other Turkish universities fell dozens of places. This had nothing to do with the quality of the universities and everything to do with methodological changes, especially to the citations indicator.

The verdict of the US News America's best Colleges is simple. RPI was 42nd in 2007 and it is 42nd in the 2018 rankings, although apparently alumni giving has gone.down.

Comparing data from US News in 2007 and 2015, RPI is more selective with more applicants of whom a smaller proportion are admitted. SAT scores are higher and more students come from the top 10% of their high school. There are more women and more international and out of state students.

The school may, however, have become less equitable. The percentage of Black students has fallen from 4% to 2% and that of students needing financial aid from 70% to 65%.

As a national university with an undergraduate teaching mission RPI is certainly not declining in any sense although it may be less welcoming for poor and Black students and it is definitely becoming more expensive for everybody.

The international rankings, especially those based on research, tell a different story. RPI is slipping everywhere: from 243 in 2014 to 301 in 2017 in the CWUR rankings, from 589 in 2010-11 to 618 in 2017 in URAP, from 341 in 2013 to 390 in 2017 in Nature Index, from 128 in 2010 to 193 in 2017 in the Round University Rankings.

In the Shanghai rankings, RPI fell from the 151-200 band to the 501-600, partly because of the loss of a couple of highly cited researchers and the declining value of a Nobel winning alumnus .

RPI's fall in the global rankings is largely a reflection of the general decline of the US and the rise of China, which has overtaken the US in research output and supercomputing. But there is more. In the indicator that measures research quality in the CWTS Leiden ranking, percentage of papers in the top 10% of journals, RPI has fallen from 23 in 2011-12 to 194 in 2017.

It seems that RPI is holding its own or a bit more as an American teaching university. Whether that is worth the biggest salary in the country is for others to argue about. But it is definitely losing out to international competition as far as research quality is concerned. That, however, is an American problem and RPI's difficulties are hardly unique.

Rankings and the financialisation of higher education

University rankings are now being used for purposes that would have been inconceivable a decade ago. The latest is supporting the large scale borrowing of money by UK universities.

The Financial Times has an interesting article by Thomas Hale about the growing financialisation of British higher education. He reports that some universities such as Portsmouth, Bristol, Cardiff and Oxford are resorting to capital markets for financing supposedly because of declining government support.

The University of Portsmouth has borrowed GBP 100 million from two North American institutional investors. The placement agent was Lloyds and  PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) the advisors.

"The money will be spent on the first phase of “estate development”. It is expected to involve a number of buildings, including an indoor sports facility, the extension of a lecture hall, and a flagship “teaching and learning building”."

It seems that this is just part of a larger trend.

"The private placement market – by definition, more opaque than its public counterpart — is a particularly attractive option for universities, and a popular target of investment for US pension and insurance money seeking long-term projects. Lloyds estimates that more than £3bn has been borrowed by UK universities since 2016 on capital markets, with around half of that coming via private placements.

The market is small by the standards of capital markets, but significant in relation to the overall size of the country’s higher education sector, which has a total annual income of close to £30bn, according to the Higher Education Funding Council for England. "

The press release explicitly referred to Portsmouth as being first in the UK for boosting graduate salaries, by which is meant earning above expectations based on things like social background and exam results. That could reflect credit on the university although a cynic might wonder whether that is just because expectations were very low to start off with. In addition, the university is ranked 37th among UK universities in the Guardian University Guide and in the top 100 in the Times Higher Education (THE) Young Universities Rankings.

If millions of pounds have been advanced in part because of a 98th place in the THE young universities rankings that might not be a wise decision. These rankings are quite credible for the top 20 or 30 but go down a bit more and in 74th place is Veltech University in India which has a perfect score for research impact based entirely on the publications of exactly one serial self-citer.

The profile of the University of Portsmouth shows a fairly high score for citations and a low one for research, which is often a sign that its position has little to do with research excellence and more to do with getting into high-citation, multi-author astrophysics and medical projects. That does appear to be the case with Portsmouth and it could mean that the university's place in the young university rankings is precarious since it could be undermined by methodological changes or by the departure of a few highly cited researchers.

The role of PwC as advisor is interesting since that company is also charged with auditing the THE world rankings.