UK rises in the U21 system rankings

The comparison of national higher education systems by Universitas 21 shows that the UK has risen from 10th place to 4th since 2012.

These rankings consists of four groups of indicators: resources, connectivity, environment and output. Since 2012 the British higher education has risen from 27th to to 12th for resources, 13th to 10th for environment  and 6th to 4th for connectivity. It was in second place for output in 2012 and in 2016 but its score rose from 62.2 to 69.9 over the four years.

Every few months, whenever any sort of ranking is published, there is an outcry from British universities that austerity and government demands and interference and immigration controls are ruining higher education.

If the U21 rankings have any validity then it would seem that British universities have been very generously funded in comparison to other countries.

Perhaps they could return some of the money or at least say thank you to the state that has been so kind to them.

Does a programming competition in Thailand show the future of the world economy?

The ACM ICPC (Association for Computing Machinery -- Intercollegiate Programme) is the "Olympics of Programming Competitions". The competitors are teams of university students who grapple with complex real-world problems. It is a "battle of logic, strategy and mental endurance" and is the apex of a series of local and regional competitions.

Success in the competition requires a high level of intelligence, genuine team formation and rigorous training. It is the antithesis of the intellectual levelling and  narcissistic cult of safe spaces that has infected American and, perhaps to a lesser extent, British universities.

The finals have just been completed in Thailand. The top five are:

1.  St. Petersburg State University
2.  Shanghai Jiao Tong University
3.  Harvard University
4.  St. Petersburg Institute of Physics and Technology
5.  University of Warsaw

The list of universities in the top ten, the top fifty and the total number of finalists is interesting. If this competition reflects the current level of intelligence of university students, then the future for China, patches of the rest of Asia, and Russia and Eastern Europe looks bright. The USA may do well if -- a very big if -- it can continue to attract large numbers of Chinese students and immigrants. For Africa and Western Europe, including the UK, the economy of the 21st century may be bleak.

Below, countries are ranked according to the number of universities in the top ten, the top fifty and all finalists.

Rank	Country	Top 10	Top 50	Total Finalists
1	Russia	5	10	12
2	USA	2	6	23
3	Poland	2	3	3
4	China	1	10	17
5	Brazil		2	6
6	Japan		2	4
7	Ukraine		2	3
8=	Belarus		2	2
8=	Taiwan		2	2
10	Bangladesh		1	3
11=	Canada		1	2
11=	Iran		1	2
11=	South Korea		1	2
11=	Vietnam		1	2
15=	Argentina		1	1
15=	Croatia		1	1
15=	Finland		1	1
15=	Hong Kong		1	1
15=	North Korea		1	1
15=	Singapore		1	1
21	India			6
22	Egypt			4
23=	Mexico			3
23=	Syria			3
25=	Australia			2
25=	Colombia			2
25=	Netherlands			2
28=	Chile			1
28=	Cuba			1
28=	Czech Republic			1
28=	Jordan			1
28=	Macao			1
28=	Pakistan			1
28=	Peru			1
28=	Philippines			1
28=	Slovakia			1
28=	South Africa			1
28=	Spain			1
28=	Switzerland			1
28=	Thailand			1
28=	UK			1
28=	Venezuela			1

Don’t rush to conclusions from the THE rankings

My 15th May post has been republished in University World News with a different title.



Don’t rush to conclusions from the THE rankings

One more thing about the THE reputation rankings

I have just remembered something about the THE reputation reputation rankings that is worth noting.

THE have broken out the scores for teaching reputation and research reputation for the first fifty universities and this gives us a chance to ask if there is any meaningful difference between teaching and research reputation.

The answer is that there is not. The correlation between the teaching and the research scores is .986. This is so high that for practical purposes they are exactly the same thing. The 15% weighting given for teaching (actually "postgraduate supervision") reputation may be unrelated to undergraduate teaching or even to taught master's teaching.The emphasis on research in the THE world rankings is therefore even higher than THE claim, at least at the top.

This has already been pointed out by Alex Usher of High Education Strategy Associates of Canada who found a correlation of .991 in 2013.