Observation on the THE Ranking

There will be some comments on the latest Times Higher Education World University Rankings over the next few days.

For the moment, I would just like to point to one noticeable feature of the rankings. The scores have improved across the board.

In 2011 the top university (Caltech) had an overall score of 94.8. This year it was 95.5.

In 2011 the 50th ranked university had a score of 64.9. This year it was 69.4.

In 2011 the 100th ranked university had a score of 53.7. This year it was 57.5 for the universities jointly ranked 99th..

In 2011 the 150th ranked university had a score of 46.7. This year it was 51.6.

In 2011 the 200th ranked university had a score of 41.4. This year it was 46.2.

The overall score is a combination of 13 different indicators all of which are benchmarked against the highest scorer in each category, which receives a score of 100. Even if universities throughout the world were spending more money, improving staff - student ratios, producing more articles, generating more citations and so on, this would not in itself raise everbody's, or nearly everybody's score.

There are no methodological changes this year  that might explain what happened.

Dumbing Down Watch

Is any comment needed?

Students starting university for the first time this autumn will be given a detailed breakdown of their academic achievements, exam results, extra-curricular activities and work placements, it was revealed.

More than half of universities in Britain will issue the new "Higher Education Achievement Report", with plans for others to adopt it in the future.

University leaders said the document would initially list students’ overarching degree classification.

But Prof Sir Robert Burgess, vice-chancellor of Leicester University and chairman of a working group set up to drive the reforms, said it was hoped that first, second and third-class degrees would eventually be phased out altogether.

University Migration Alert

At the time of posting, The new THE rankings listed Stellenbosch University in South Africa as one of the top European universities.

Remind me to apply for a job with Thomson Reuters sometime.

THE Rankings Out

The Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2012 are out. The top ten are :

1.  Caltech  (same as last year)
2.  Oxford  (up 2 places)
3.  Stanford (down 1)
4.  Harvard  (down 2)
5.  MIT (up 2)
6.  Princeton  (down 1)
7.  Cambridge (down 1)
8.  Imperial College London (same)
9.  Berekeley (up 1)

At the top, the most important change is that Oxford has moved up two places to replace Harvard in the number two spot.