Friday, April 13, 2018
At last. A Ranking With Cambridge at the Bottom
Cambridge usually does well in national and global rankings. The most recent ARWU from Shanghai puts it in third place and although it does less well in other rankings it always seems to be in the top twenty. It has suffered at the hands of the citations indicator in the THE world rankings which seem to think that Anglia Ruskin University, formerly the Cambridgeshire College of Arts and Technology, has a greater global research impact but nobody takes that seriously.
So it is a surprise to find an article in the Guardian about a ranking from the Higher Education Policy Institute ( HEPI) in the UK that actually puts Cambridge at the bottom and the University of Hull at the top. Near the bottom are others in the Russell group, Oxford, Bristol and LSE.
At the top we find Edge Hill, Cardiff Metropolitan and, of course, Anglia Ruskin Universities.
The ranking was part of a report written for HEPI by Iain Martin, vice-chancellor of Anglia Ruskin University, that supposedly rates universities for fair access, that is having a student intake that mirrors society as a whole. It compares the percentage of participation in higher education of school leavers in local authority areas with the percentage admitted by specific universities. Universities have a high rank if they draw students from areas where relatively few school leavers go to university. The rationale is the claim that learning outcomes are improved when people of diverse backgrounds study together.
It is noticeable that there several Scottish universities clustered at the bottom even though Scotland has a free tuition policy (not for the English of course) that was supposed to guarantee fair access.
This rankings looks like an inversion of the ranking of UK universities according to average entry tariff, ie 'A' level grades, and a similar inversion of most global rankings based on research or reputation.
Cambridge and other Russell Group universities have been under increasing pressure to relax entry standards and indiscriminately recruit more low income students and those from historically unrepresented groups. It seems that they are slowly giving way to the pressure and that as academic standards erode they will be gradually eclipsed by the rising universities of East Asia.
Saturday, March 24, 2018
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.
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
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.
Friday, March 23, 2018
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.
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.”
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