It looks as though a two-tier international university ranking system is emerging.
At the top we have the 'big three', Shanghai's Academic Ranking of World Universities, the QS World University Rankings and, since 2010, the Times Higher Education World University Rankings.
These receive massive attention from the media, are avidly followed by academics, students and other stakeholders and are often quoted in promotional literature. Graduation from a university included in these has even been proposed as a requirement for immigration.
Then we have the rankings by SCImago and Webometrics, both from Spain, the Performance Ranking of Scientific Papers for World Universities produced by the Higher education Evaluation and Accreditation Council of Taiwan, and the Leiden Ranking, published by the Centre for Science and Technology Studies at Leiden University.
These rankings get less publicity but are technically very competent and in some ways more reliable than the better-known rankings.
Going through the comparison of the various methodologies, the report details what is actually measured, how the scores for indicators are measured, and how the final scores are calculated — and therefore what the results actually mean.
The first criticism of university rankings is that they tend to principally measure research activities and not teaching. Moreover, the ‘unintended consequences’ of the rankings are clear, with more and more institutions tending to modify their strategy in order to improve their position in the rankings instead of focusing on their main missions.
For some ranking systems, lack of transparency is a major concern, and the QS World University Ranking in particular was criticized for not being sufficiently transparent.
The report also reveals the subjectivity in the proxies chosen and in the weight attached to each, which leads to composite scores that reflect the ranking provider’s concept of quality (for example, it may be decided that a given indicator may count for 25% or 50% of overall assessment score, yet this choice reflects a subjective assessment of what is important for a high-quality institute). In addition, indicator scores are not absolute but relative measures, which can complicate comparisons of indicator scores. For example, if the indicator is number of students per faculty, what does a score of, say, 23 mean? That there are 23 students per faculty member? Or does it mean that this institute has 23% of the students per faculty compared with institutes with the highest number of students/faculty? Moreover, considering simple counts or relative values is not neutral. As an example, the Academic Ranking of World Universities ranking does not take into consideration the size of the institutions.
The EUA report makes several recommendations for ranking-makers, including the need to mention what the ranking is for, and for whom it is intended. Among the suggestions to improve the rankings, the following received the greatest attention from the audience:
- Include non-journal publications properly, including books, which are especially important for social sciences and the arts and humanities;
- Address language issues (is an abstract available in English, as local language versions are often less visible?);
- Include more universities: currently the rankings assess only 1–3% of the 17,000 existing universities worldwide;
- Take into consideration the teaching mission with relevant indicators.
Russia’s education ministry is currently drawing up a list of foreign universities whose qualifications will be recognized.
The list will include only universities located within the G8 countries that enter the top 300 in the Academic Ranking of World Universities or the QS World University Rankings. Officials say there will be around 300 institutions meeting the criteria.
The reform is intended to attract more students to take part in Russian MA and PhD programs.
He said that he would discuss his papers with fellow scientists, and only when he thought that they were of a sufficiently high standard would he publish them. "I am too arrogant and have too much self-respect to allow a bad paper to pass through," he said.
Prof El Naschie called one witness, Prof Otto Rossler - an honorary editor of Chaos, Solitons and Fractals.
He told the court that there was no-one who could peer review him, referring to Prof El Naschie, because "if you have something new to offer, peer review is dangerous", adding that in such cases "peer review delays progress in science".
Prof El-Naschie asked his witness whether he thought that his (Prof El Naschie) papers were of "poor quality".
Prof Rossler replied: "On the contrary, they were very important and will become more important in the future."
And he added: "You are the most hard-working and diligent scientists I have ever met."
PETALING JAYA: Malaysia has little to show for its universities despite spending more money on tertiary education than do many other countries.
Malaysian universities lag behind many counterparts in Asia, including those located in neighbouring countries like Thailand and Singapore, according to a World Bank report released today.
“While Malaysia spends slightly more than most countries on its university students, leading Malaysian universities perform relatively poorly in global rankings,” said the report, entitled Malaysia Economic Monitor: Smart Cities.
Citing the Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) World University Rankings 2010, it noted that Universiti Malaya (UM) was ranked 207th worldwide and 29th in Asia.
It also quoted a US News and World 2011 report on the World’s Best Universities, which put UM, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Universiti Sains Malaysia and Universiti Putra Malaysia at 167th, 279th, 335th and 358th place respectively.
Even more worrying, the World Bank report observed, was the “increasing gap” between Malaysia’s and Singapore’s universities.
It compared UM with the National University of Singapore (NUS), which QS cited as the leading university in Southeast Asia.
“The gap between UM and NUS has been high and generally increasing, especially in the sciences,” the report said.
According to the report, UM and NUS were on par when it came to science and technology in 2005. However, UM has lost out to NUS over the past six years.
The report also said many of Malaysia’s university graduates did not seem to have the skills that would help them get employment.
Comment
The case seems to offer ammunition to libel reformers. Even in the absence of the ill-advised and incoherent aspects of his case which were excluded before trial, and of the implicit comparisons of his work to Einstein’s made during the first five days at the High Court, his claim against a venerable and highly respected scientific journal seems a poor substitute for meeting their allegations head on in some form of correspondence or public debate. Moreover, the journal had published the Claimant’s own defence of his methods in running CSF, that he sought to emphasise scientific content above impressive affiliations, in the original article.
A spokesperson for the Libel Reform campaign, speaking to the Guardian, commented that reform can’t come soon enough, since
“Scientists expect publications like Nature to investigate and write about controversies within the scientific community. The threat of libel action is preventing scientific journals from discussing what is good and bad science.”However, the public interest defence argued for by campaigners is one which is already being employed. The BBC reports that Andrew Caldecott QC’s opening statement for the Defendants described their defence as relying on the article being “true, honest opinion and responsible journalism on an issue of public interest”.
As the choice of witnesses indicates, the case does touch on the seemingly incomprehensible branch of physics in which the Claimant has made his academic career. In this respect there is a threat of a libel action stifling academic debate, and a similarity to BCA v Singh 2010 EWCA Civ 350, where opinions expressed in a controversy on what was essentially a scientific matter were at issue. But it is also about the methods he employed in running a publication in the context of a widely recognised system of accreditation and review, and about allegations regarding the professional affiliations which feature on his website. These are the kind of criticisms that might be made about any professional person, and would not necessarily come under scope of a scientific exception for “rigorous debate” on good and bad science urged by campaigners.
El Naschie is suing Nature as a result of a news article published in 2008, after the scientist's retirement as editor-in-chief of the journal Chaos, Solitons and Fractals. The article alleged that El Naschie had self-published several research papers, some of which did not seem to have been peer reviewed to an expected standard and also said that El Naschie claimed affiliations and honorary professorships with international institutions that could not be confirmed by Nature. El Naschie claims the allegations in the article were false and had damaged his reputation.
On Friday, Nature called Professor Neil Turok, a cosmologist and director of the Perimeter Institute in Canada, as an expert witness to assess some of the work published by El Naschie.
Turok described his expertise as being in cosmology. "I work at the theoretical end of cosmology … my work consists of applying unified theories, such as string theory, to the most difficult questions in cosmology, namely the beginning of the universe or the initial singularity, the moment where everything was at a single point in the conventional description."
In his evidence, Turok said he found it difficult to understand the logic in some of El Naschie's papers. The clear presentation of scientific ideas was an important step in getting an idea accepted, he said. "There are two questions – one is whether the work is clearly presented and readers would be able to understand it. It would be difficult for a trained theoretical physicist to understand [some of El Naschie's papers]. I couldn't understand it and I made a serious attempt to understand it. The second question is about the correctness of the theory and that will be decided by whether it agrees with experiments. Most theories in theoretical physics are speculative – we form a logical set of rules and deductions and we try, ultimately, to test the deductions in experiments. For me, clear presentation is the first thing in the presentation of a theory."
In response, El Naschie pointed out that even Albert Einstein had made mistakes in his publications. "Einstein is the most sloppy scientist ever. He never defined his quantities, he doesn't put in references and he made so many mistakes of mathematics and concepts. He was a very natural man when he explained something to lay people. But Einstein, whom I admire very much because he had imagination and the courage to stand up to the bloody Nazis, Einstein was an extremely sloppy man."
Later in the session, El Naschie accused Turok of having "no idea" about mathematics and being unqualified to assess his work. "If somebody doesn't understand things, it's his own limitation," El Naschie said.
Matthew Knight, chairman of Universities HR and the University of Leeds HR director, said: “Within the context of £9,000 fees, many universities have a strategic drive to improve the quality of the student experience.
“Therefore, many are taking the opportunity to improve student staff ratios regardless of the numbers of applicants. So there’s a lot of recruitment going on at some universities, although there’s no specific pattern to this.”
As the QS World University Rankings use student-faculty ratios as the only globally comparable indicator to determine their tables, an increase in employment can be used to promote a university’s image and attract students.
Benjamin De Lacy Costello, a materials scientist at the University of the West of England in Bristol, UK, testified yesterday that when El Naschie was editor, the peer-review process at Chaos, Solitons and Fractals was "frustrating" and unlike that of other journals.
With regard to the dispute over El Naschie's affiliations, Timothy John Pedley, former head of the department of applied mathematics and theoretical physics at the University of Cambridge, said that El Naschie was a visiting scholar with access to libraries and collaborations at the department, but was not an honorary scholar working with the privileges of a professor.
Update: Mohamed El Naschie, a former editor of the scientific journal Chaos, Solitons and Fractals, appeared in London's High Court today for the libel lawsuit he has brought against the scientific journal Nature.
El Naschie is representing himself.During El Naschie's cross-examination of journalist Quirin Schiermeier, who wrote the 2008 article about him, Schiermeier stood by the content of the work, saying, "We wrote the article because you published 58 papers in one year in a journal where you acted as editor-in-chief. That is unusual and potentially unethical."
El Naschie responded that he felt it wasn't unheard of for journals to publish work that isn't peer-reviewed. He also said that his work had been stolen. "We published my work to secure it," he told the court. "Senior people are above this childish, vain practice of peer review."
Also, after the launch of the World University Rankings 2010 it became apparent that, owing to a data processing error, the ranking positions of two Australian universities in the top 200 list were incorrect — the University of Adelaide and Monash University.
Both universities remain in the top 1 per cent of world universities.
Adelaide's DVCR Mike Brooks said it had been "disconcerting'' that there had been a data processing error last year in the first iteration of the revised rankings since their split from QS. "It certainly raises further questions about the credibility of the rankings,'' Professor Brooks said.
"Based on our own analysis we believe that we have a similar ranking this year to that of 2010. The shift in position is attributed to the error in the processing last year, ongoing changes in THE methodology and increased competition.''
"I think the students and the wider community are able to judge for themselves. As South Australia's leading research-university and only member of the Group of Eight, I know that we are in an incredibly strong position for the future.''
"Harvard reported funding increases that are similar in proportion to those of many other universities, whereas Caltech reported a steep rise (16 per cent) in research funding and an increase in totalinstitutional income."
Before accounting for investment losses, total unrestricted revenues increased 6.7% including JPL, and 14.0% excluding JPL
Research awards in FY 2009 reached an all-time high of $357 million, including $29 million of funds secured from the federal stimulus package. Awards from federal sponsors increased by 34.4%, while awards from nonfederal sponsors increased by 20.7%. We also had a good year in terms of private giving, as donors continue to recognize the importance of the research and educational efforts of our outstanding faculty and students.
