Times
Higher Education has
just republished an article by Amanda Goodall, ‘Top 20 ways to improve your
world university ranking’. Much of her
advice is very sensible -- appointing university leaders with a strong research
record, for example -- but in most cases the road from her suggestions to a
perceptible improvement in the rankings is likely to be winding and very long. It
is unlikely that any of her proposals would have much effect on the rankings in
less than a decade or even two.
So here are 20 realistic proposals for a university wishing
to join the rankings game.
Before starting, any advice about how a university can rise
in the rankings should be based on these principles.
·
Rankings are proliferating and no doubt there will be more
in the future. There is something for almost anybody if you look carefully
enough.
·
The indicators and methodology of the better known rankings
are very different. Something that works with one may not work with another. It
might even have a negative effect.
·
There is often a price to pay for getting ahead in the
rankings. Everybody should consider whether it is worth it. Also, while rising from 300th place to 250th is quite easy, going from 30th to 25th is another matter.
·
Don’t forget the number on the bottom. It might be easier
to reduce the number of academic staff than to increase the number of citations
or publications.
·
Rankings are at best an approximation to what universities
do. Nobody should get too excited about them.
The top 20 ways in which universities can quickly improve
their positions in one or more of the international university rankings are:
1. Get rid
of students
Over the years many universities acquire a collection of
branch campuses, general studies programmes, night schools, pre-degree programmes
and so on. Set them free to become independent universities or colleges. Almost
always, these places have relatively more students and relatively fewer faculty
than the main campus. The university will therefore do better in the Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) and Times Higher Education (THE) faculty student ratio
indicators. Also, staff in the spun off
branches and schools generally produce less research than those at the main
campus so you will get a boost in the productivity per capita indicator in the Shanghai ARWU rankings.
2. Kick out the old and bring in the young
Get rid of ageing professors, especially if unproductive and
expensive, and hire lots of indentured servants adjunct and temporary teachers
and researchers. Again, this will improve the university’s performance on the THE
and QS faculty student ratio indicators. They will not count as senior faculty so
this will be helpful for ARWU.
3. Hire research assistants
Recruiting slave labour cheap or unpaid research
assistants (unemployed or unemployable graduate interns?) will boost the score
for faculty student ratio in the QS rankings, since QS counts research-only
staff for their faculty student indicator. It will not, however, work for the THE
rankings. Remember that for QS more
faculty are good for faculty student ratio but bad for citations per faculty so
you have to analyse the potential trade off carefully.
4. Think about an exit option
If an emerging university wants to be included in the
rankings it might be better to focus on just one of them. Panjab University is doing very well in the
THE rankings but does not appear in the QS rankings. But remember that if you
apply to be ranked by THE and you do not like your placing then it is always
possible to opt out by not submitting data next year. But QS has a Hotel
California policy: once in, you can check out but you can never leave. It does
not matter how much you complain about the unique qualities of your institution
and how they are neglected by the rankers, QS will go on ranking you whether you
like it.
5. Get a medical school
If you do not have a
medical school or a research and/or teaching hospital then get one from
somewhere. Merge with an existing one or start your own. If you have one, get
another one. Medical research produces a disproportionate number of papers and
citations which is good for the QS citations per faculty indicator and the ARWU
publications indicator. Remember this strategy may not help so much with THE who use
field normalisation. Those citations of medical research will help there only
if they above the world average for field and year.
Update August 2016: QS now have a moderate form of field normalisation so the advantage of a medical school is reduced but the Shanghai rankings are still biased towards medical research.
6. But if you are a
medical school, diversify
QS and THE supposedly do not include single subject
institutions in their general rankings, although from time to time one will, like the University of California at
San Francisco, Aston Business School or (National Research Nuclear University) Moscow Engineering Physics Institute (MEPhI),
slip through. If you are an independent
medical or single subject institution consider adding one or two more subjects
then QS and THE will count you although you will probably start sliding down the ARWU table.
7. Amalgamate
The Shanghai rankings count the total number of publications
in the SCI and SSCI, the total number of highly cited researchers and the total
number of papers without regard for the number of researchers. THE and QS count
the number of votes in their surveys without considering the number of alumni.
What about a new mega university formed by merging LSE,
University College London and Imperial College? Or a tres grande ecole from all
those little grandes ecoles around Paris?
Update August 2016: This is pretty much what the University of Paris-Saclay is doing.
8. Consider the
weighting of the rankings
THE gives a 30 % weighting to citations and 2.5% to income
from industry. QS gives 40 % to its academic survey and 5 % to international
faculty. So think about where you are going to spend your money.
9. The wisdom of crowds
Focus on research projects in those fields that have huge
multi - “author” publications, particle
physics, astronomy and medicine for example.
Such publications often have very large numbers of citations. Even if
your researchers make a one in two thousandth contribution Thomson Reuters, THE’s
data collector, will give them the same credit as they would get if they were
the only authors. This will not work for the
Leiden Ranking which uses fractionalised counting of citations. Note that this strategy works best when combined with number
10.
Update August 2016: THE methodological changes in 2015 mean that this does not work any more. Look at what happened to Middle East Technical University. But it is still worth looking out for projects with dozens or scores of contributors.
10. Do not produce too much
You need to produce 200 papers a year to be included in the
THE rankings. But producing more papers than this might be counterproductive. If
your researchers are producing five thousand papers a year then those five
hundred citations from a five hundred “author” report on the latest discovery
in particle physics will not have much impact. But if you are publishing three
hundred papers a year those citations will make a very big difference. This is
why Dr El Naschie’s frequently
cited papers in Chaos, Solitons and
Fractals were a big boost for Alexandria University but not for
Cambridge, Surrey, Cornell and Frankfurt universities with whom he also claimed
affiliation. However, Leiden will not rank universities until they reach
500 papers a year.
Update August 2016: See number 9.
11. Moneyball Strategy
In his book Moneyball, Michael Lewis recounted the ascent
of the Oakland As baseball team through a strategy of buying undervalued players.
The idea was to find players who did things that led to their teams winning
even if they did not match the stereotype of a talented player.
This strategy was applied by George
Mason University in Virginia who created a top basketball team by
recruiting players who were overlooked by scouts because they were too small or
too fat and a top economics department by recruiting advocates of a market
economy at a time when such an idea was unfashionable.
Universities could recruit researchers who are prolific and
competent but are unpromotable or unemployable because they are in the wrong
group or fail to subscribe enthusiastically to current academic orthodoxies.
Maybe start with Mark
Regnerus and Jason
Richwine.
Update August 2016: See the story of Tim Groseclose's move from UCLA to George Mason
12. Expand doctoral
programmes
One indicator in the THE world rankings is the ratio of
doctoral to bachelor degree students.
Panjab University recently announced that they will
introduce integrated masters and doctors programmes. This could be a smart move
if it means students no longer go into master’s programmes but instead into
something that can be counted as a doctoral degree program.
13. The importance of names
Make sure that your researchers know which university they
are affiliated to and that they know its correct name. Make sure that branch
campuses, research institutes and other autonomous or quasi- autonomous groups
incorporate the university name in their publications. Keep an eye on Scopus
and ISI and make sure they know what you are called. Be especially careful if
you are an American state university.
14. Evaluate
staff according to criteria relevant to the rankings
If staff are to be appointed and promoted according to their
collegiality, the enthusiasm with which
they take part in ISO exercises, community
service, ability to make the faculty a pleasant place for everybody or commitment to diversity then you will get collegial,
enthusiastic etc faculty. But those are things that the rankers do not – for once
with good reason – attempt to measure.
While you are about it get rid of interviews for staff and
students. Predictive validity ranges from zero to low
15. Collaborate
The more authors a paper has the more likely it is to be
cited, even if it is only self-citation.
Also, the more collaborators you have the greater the chances of a good
score in the reputation surveys. And do not forget the percentage of
collaborators who are international is also an indicator in the THE rankings
16. Rebrand
It would be good to have names that are as distinctive and
memorable as possible. Consider a name change. Do you really think that the
average scientist filling out the QS or the THE reputation surveys is going to remember
which of the sixteen (?) Indian Institutes of Technology is especially good in
engineering.
Update August 2016: But not too memorable. I doubt that Lovely Professional University will get the sort of public interest it is hoping for.
17. Be proactive
Rankings are changing all the time so think about indicators
that might be introduced in the near future. It would seem quite easy, for
example, for rankers to collect data about patent applications.
Update August 2016: Make sure everyone keeps their Google Scholar Citations Profiles up to date.
18. Support your
local independence movement
It has been known for a long time that increasing the number
of international students and faculty is good for both the THE and QS rankings.
But there are drawbacks to just importing students. If it is difficult to move
students across borders why not create new borders?
If Scotland votes for independence in next year’s referendum
its scores for international students and international faculty in the QS and
THE rankings would go up since English and Welsh students and staff would be
counted as international.
Update August 2016: Scotland didn't but there may be another chance.
19. Accept that some
things will never work
Realise that there are some things that are quite pointless
from a rankings perspective. Or any other for that matter. Do not bother telling staff and students to
click away at the website to get into Webometrics. Believe it or not, there are precautions against that sort of thing. Do not have motivational weekends. Do not have quality initiatives unless they
get rid of the cats.
Update August 2016: That should read do not do anything "motivational". The only thing they motivate is the departure of people with other options.
20. Get Thee to an Island
Leiden Ranking has a little known ranking that measures the
distance between collaborators. At the moment the first place goes to the
Australian National University. Move to Easter Island or the Falklands and you
will be top for something.
