- Five out of the top fifty universities is a pretty good score, given that we have about 5% of total OECD population.
- If your universities slide in a single year, this is unlikely to be due to a sudden collapse in quality. It is more likely because the ranking method has changed, which is just what happened in this case.
- It seems exaggerated to call the THES rankings "the major global benchmark of worldwide university performance", as the THES editor does.There are several different rankings out there. The most respected, I would say, is the Academic Ranking of World Universities published by Shanghai Jiao Tong university. In the 2010 version, the UK gets five out of the top fifty spots... and the same number in 2009... and in 2008.
- Previous THES rankings seemed crazily pro-UK to me. Four out of the top ten universities in the world? Seventeen in the top 100, with the University of Manchester beating UCLA, and Bristol beating Northwestern and Berkeley? I don't find that plausible.
Thursday, 16 September 2010
Bullshit from many angles
Some facts about the THES universities rankings story, in case anyone in the UK was wondering.
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THES rankings are still crazily pro-UK and crazily pro-English speaking generally. In part, that's their "diversity" considerations, but that probably cannot account for it completely.
ReplyDeleteIn Engineering, they rank France's École Polytechnique below University of Manchester , which is simply laughably. École Polytechnique is almost surely better than Oxford and Cambridge in Engineering.
http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-university-rankings/2011-2012/engineering-and-IT.html
I'd imagine Istanbul's Bogaziçi University, several Eastern European places, etc. all beat Manchester in Engineering. I cannot be sure about the details, but that's my expectation.