Are Turkish Universities Declining? More misuse of Rankings

Sorry to get repetitive.

Another article has appeared offering the Times Higher Education  (THE) world rankings as evidence for the decline of national universities.

Matin Gurcan in Al-Monitor argues that Turkish universities are in decline for several reasons, including uncontrolled boutique private universities, excessive government control, academic purges, lack of training for research staff and rampant nepotism.

We have been here before. But are Turkish universities really in decline?

The main evidence offered is that there are fewer Turkish universities at the higher levels of the THE rankings. The other rankings that are now available are ignored.

It is typical of the current state of higher education journalism that many commentators seem unaware that there are now many university rankings and that some of them are as valid and accurate as THE's if not better. The ascendancy of the THE is largely a creation of a lazy and compliant media.

Turkish universities have certainly fallen in the THE rankings.

In 2014 there were six Turkish universities in the world's top 500 and four in the top 200. Leading the pack was Middle East Technical University (METU) in 85th place, up from the 221-250 band in 2013

A year later there were four in the top 500 and none in the top 200. METU was in the 500-600 band.

Nepotism, purges, lack of training were not the cause. They were as relevant here as goodness was to Mae West's diamonds. What happened was that in 2015 THE made a number of changes to the methodology of its flagship citations indicator. The country adjustment which favoured universities in countries with low citation counts was reduced. There was a switch from Web of Science to Scopus as  the data source. Citations to mega-papers such as those emanating from the CERN projects, with thousands of contributors and thousands were no longer counted.

Some Turkish universities were heavily over-invested in the CERN project, which took them to an unusually high position in 2014. In 2015 they went crashing down the THE rankings largely as a result of the methodological adjustments. 

Other rankings such as URAP and National Taiwan University show that Turkish universities, especially METU, have declined but not nearly as much or as quickly as the THE rankings appear to show. 

In the Round University Rankings there were seven Turkish universities in the top 500 in 2014, six in 2015, and seven in 2018, METU was 375th in 2014, 308th in 2015, and  437th in 2018: a significantly decline but much less than the one recorded by THE.

Meanwhile the US News Best Global Universities rankings show three Turkish universities, including METU, in the top 500.

I do not dispute that Turkish universities have problems or the significance of the trends mentioned by Matin Gurcan.  The evidence of the rankings is that they are declining at least in comparison with other universities especially in Asia. The THE world rankings are not, however, a good source of evidence.