The Webometrics Rankings

The July 2013 Webometrics rankings have just been published. The top five are:

1.  Harvard
2.  MIT
3.  Stanford
4.  UC Berkeley
5.  UCLA

In first place in various regions are:

Latin America: Sao Paulo
Europe: Oxford
Asia: National University of Singapore
Africa: Kwazulu Natal
Arab World: King Saud University
Oceania: Australian National University
Caribbean: University of Puerto Rico Mayaguez
Middle East: Tel Aviv
South Asia: IIT Bombay
Eastern and Central Europe: Lomonosov Moscow State University

The Forbes Rankings

Forbes has just released its Best College list, which is compiled by the Center of College Affordability and Productivity. This index reflects student needs and the indicators include quality of teaching, student debt and graduate employability.

Stanford is at the top, Harvard is eighth and Caltech 18th. The armed forces academies and small liberal arts colleges do well.

The top five are:

1.  Stanford
2.  Pomona College.
3.  Princeton
4.  Yale
5.  Columbia

Shopping Around

It seems that many universities are now targeting specific rankings. One example is Universiti Malaya which submits data to QS but so far has not taken part in the THE rankings.

Now there is a report about the University of Canberra:

"The University of Canberra will spend $15 million over the next five years on some of the world's top researchers as the university pushes to break into the world rankings by 2018
The university has budgeted $3 million a year to attract 10 ''high performing'' researchers in five specialist areas: governance, environment, communication, education and health.
The recruitment drive started last week with advertising in the London Times Higher Education supplement [sic], with the paper's ranking of ''young'' universities the target of UC's campaign, with 13 Australian universities already in their top 100.
''We've decided to aim for [that] one particular ranking, although that will probably mean we'll hit some of the targets for many of the rankings, because there are an overlapping set of criteria that are used,'' Professor Frances Shannon, the university's deputy vice-chancellor of research, said."

It looks like the university is aiming not just at the THE under-50 rankings but specifically at the citations indicator which rewards high levels of citations in fields that are usually not cited very much.

This may be another case where the pursuit of ranking glory undermines the overall quality of a university.

"The recruitment drive comes after the university was criticised this month for axing language courses to try to combat government funding cuts while continuing its sponsorship of the Brumbies rugby team."

A bad idea but not really new

From Times Higher Education

University teachers everywhere are subject to this sort of pressure but it is unusual for it to be stated so explicitly.

"A university put forward plans to assess academics’ performance according to the number of students receiving at least a 2:1 for their modules, Times Higher Education can reveal.
According to draft guidance notes issued by the University of Surrey - and seen by THE - academics were to be required to demonstrate a “personal contribution towards achieving excellence in assessment and feedback” during their annual appraisals.
Staff were to be judged on the “percentage of students receiving a mark of 60 per cent or above for each module taught”, according to the guidance form, issued in June 2012, which was prefaced by a foreword from Sir Christopher Snowden, Surrey’s vice-chancellor, who will be president of Universities UK from 1 August.
“The intention of this target is not to inflate grades unjustifiably but to ensure that levels of good degrees sit comfortably within subject benchmarks and against comparator institutions,” the document explained.
After “extensive negotiations” with trade unions, Surrey dropped the proposed “average target mark”, with replacement guidance instead recommending that staff show there to be “a normal distribution of marks” among students."