Worth Reading 7

Searching for the Gold Standard: The Times Higher Education World University Rankings, 2010-2014

Richard Holmes

ABSTRACT

This paper analyses the global university rankings introduced by Times Higher Education (THE) in partnership with Thomson Reuters in 2010 after the magazine ended its association with its former data provider Quacquarelli Symonds. The distinctive features of the new rankings included a new procedure for determining the choice and weighting of the various indicators, new criteria for inclusion in and exclusion from the rankings, a revised academic reputation survey, the introduction of an indicator that attempted to measure innovation, the addition of a third measure of internationalization, the use of several indicators related to teaching, the bundling of indicators into groups, and, most significantly, the employment of a very distinctive measure of research impact with an unprecedentedly large weighting. The rankings met with little enthusiasm in 2010 but by 2014 were regarded with some favour by administrators and policy makers despite the reservations and criticism of informed observers and the unusual scores produced by the citations indicator. In 2014, THE announced that the partnership would come to an end and that the magazine would collect its own data. There were some changes in 2015 but the basic structure established in 2010 and 2011 remained intact.

Forthcoming  in Asian Journal of University Education, December 2015. Prepublication copy can be accessed here.

Ghost Writers

An article by Chris Havergal in Times Higher Education reports on research by Lisa Lines , a lecturer at the University of New South Wales, in Teaching in Higher Education (behind a pay wall) that suggests that the output of ghost written student essays is probably greater than expected.

The researcher had ordered undergraduate and master's essays in history and then had them marked by "leading academics." Of the 13 undergraduate essays only two received a failing grade while six out of 13 master's failed and seven passed

Lines says that the quality of the purchased essays was surprisingly high.

Possibly. Or you could say that the standard of marking was surprising low. Note that this was at a university that is in the top 150 in the world according to ARWU.

Havergal quotes Lines as saying:

“It is clear that this type of cheating is virtually undetectable by academics when students take precautions against being caught,” she concludes.

“This fact, coupled with the study’s findings that the quality of essays available for purchase is sufficient to receive a passing grade or better, reveals a very troubling situation for universities and poses a real threat to academic integrity and standards, and public perceptions of these.”

The problem lies not with dishonest student or crooked essay writers but with  corrupt selection practices  that admit academically incompetent students and a dysfunctional employment system. If you have students that cannot write and intelligent graduates who cannot find work then ghost writing is inevitable.

Looks Like THE isn't Big in Japan Anymore

It has taken a long time but it seems that Japanese universities are getting a little irritated about the Times Higher Education (THE) World and Asian University Rankings.

I have commented on the THE Asian rankings here, here and here.

According to the Nikkei Asian Review,

  Research University 11, a consortium of Japan's top 11 universities, issued a statement earlier this month that the Times Higher Education ranking should not be used to determine national policy or as an achievement indicator.

Another umbrella group, the Research University Network of Japan, which includes universities and research institutions, has opposed the ranking every year Japanese universities have taken big tumbles.

and

So achieving a higher ranking does not necessarily correlate with providing better educations and research opportunities.

For some universities, there is another worry -- politics. The Japanese government in 2013 said it would aim to ensure that Japanese universities rank among the world's top 100 over the following decade. Now, Japanese universities are required to develop specific strategies to help the government reach this "revitalization" goal.