Freedom Indicator?

It is often argued  that the quality of a a university has something to do with academic freedom. Some Western academic have become noticeably self-righteous about respect for human rights in other countries. There have been criticisms of Yale University's links with Singapore, where gay rights are restricted.

One wonders whether Western campuses should talk so loudly about freedom. A recent incident at Carleton University in Canada suggests that when it comes to human rights some humans are much more equal than others.

Carleton has a freedom wall where students can write thoughts that are forbidden in the rest of the campus, probably even in much or most of Canada. Even this was too much for Arun Smith, a seventh year (yes, that's right) human rights student. From the Macleans On Campus blog:

"Seventh-year Carleton University human rights [apparently human rights and political science with a minor in sexuality studies] student Arun Smith has apparently not been in school long enough to learn that other people have rights to opinions that differ from his. After the “free speech wall” on campus was torn down, he posted a message to his Facebook wall claiming responsibility. “If everyone speaks freely we end up simply reinforcing the hierarchies that are created in our society,” it read. The display had been erected by campus club Carleton Students for Liberty and students were encouraged to write anything they wanted on the paper. Someone wrote “abortion is murder” and “traditional marriage is awesome.” GBLTQ Centre volunteer Riley Evans took offense, telling The Charlatan student newspaper that the wall was attacking those who have had abortions and those in same-sex relationships."

It appears that Arun Smith has been widely condemned and that he will be punished. What seems to have been passed over is that it is apparently necessary to have a wall where mainstream religious opinions can be expressed. Yes, I know that "abortion is murder" is a gross simplification of a complex philosophical issue but whose fault is it that it has to be expressed in three words?

The Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms has issued a Campus Freedom Index for Canadian universities. Unsurprisingly, Carleton gets a C and 3 Fs. The best appears to be St Thomas with one A and three Bs

What about an international edition?

The Commission Strikes Back

Jordi Curell from the European Commission's Directorate General for Education and Culture has written in defence of the proposed U-multirank university ranking system. He starts:

"Is Times Higher Education worried about competition to its world university ranking from U-Multirank? It looks like it from the tone of its reporting on the new European ranking initiative launched in Dublin at the end of January. "

He concludes:

"However, the EU should not finance U-Multirank forever; this should be limited to the start-up phase. That is why the contract for delivering the ranking includes the design of a self-sustaining business plan and organising the transition to this model.

These are challenging times for higher education in Europe, and the purpose behind U-Multirank could not be clearer. Our objective is improving the performance of Europe's higher education systems – not just selling newspapers."
 

 By the way, THE is a magazine now, not a newspaper.

Wasting Money

The League of European Research Universities claims to be upset about the 2 million Euros that the Europan Uniion is spending on its proposed multi-dimensional university ranking. What do they or their American counterpartsthink about things like this?

"The president [of the US] will invest $55 million in a new First in the World competition, to support the public and private colleges and non-profit organizations as they work to develop and test the next breakthrough strategy that will boost higher education attainment and student outcomes. The new program will also help scale-up those innovative and effective practices that have been proven to boost productivity and enhance teaching and learning on college campuses."

Update on U-Multirank

Using data supplied by institutions is not a good idea for any international ranking. Apart from questions of reliability and objectivity, there is always the possibility of "conscientious objectors" disrupting the ranking process by refusing to take part.

The League of European Research Universities has just announced that it will not participate in the European Union's proposed multi-dimensional ranking project.

Membership of the League is by invitation only and "is periodically evaluated against a broad set of quantitative and qualitative criteria, such as research volume, impact and funding, strengths in PhD training, size and disciplinary breadth, and peer-recognised academic excellence." At the moment , it includes Oxford, Cambridge, Heidelberg, Geneva and Strasbourg universities.

According to Times Higher Education

'Kurt Deketelaere, secretary-general of Leru, said the organisation, whose members include the universities of Oxford, Cambridge and Edinburgh, believes the project is ill-conceived and poorly designed.

"We consider U-Multirank at best an unjustifiable use of taxpayers' money and at worst a serious threat to a healthy higher education system," he said. "Leru has serious concerns about the lack of reliable, solid and valid data for the chosen indicators in U-Multirank, about the comparability between countries, about the burden put upon universities to collect data and about the lack of 'reality-checks' in the process thus far."'

Considering the sort of thing that European universities spend texpayers' money on, 2 million Euros seem comparatively trivial. There are no doubt genuine concerns about the reliability of data produced by institutions and comparability between countries but if you can swallow the camel of Rice University and Moscow Engineering Physics Institute as the best in the world for research influence according to Times Higher and Thomson Reuters, then why strain at U-Multirank's gnats?

And as for a serious threat to higher education, I think someone should sit down for a few minutes and have a cup of tea before making any more statements.