A new Super-University for Ireland?

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Judul : A new Super-University for Ireland?
link : A new Super-University for Ireland?

University rankings have become extremely influential over the last few years. This is not entirely a bad thing. The initial publication of the Shanghai rankings in 2003, for example, exposed the pretensions of many European universities revealing just how far behind they had fallen in scientific research.  It also showed China how far it had to go to achieve scientific parity with the West.

Unfortunately, rankings have also had malign effects. The THE and QS world rankings have acquired a great deal of respect, trust, even reverence that may not be entirely deserved. Both introduced significant methodological changes in 2015 and THE has made further changes in 2016 and the consequence of this is that there have been some remarkable rises and falls within the rankings that have had a lot of publicity but have little to do with any real change in quality.

In addition, both QS and THE have increased the number of ranked universities which can affect the mean score for indicators from which the processed scores given to the public are derived. Both have surveys that can be biased and subjective. Both are unbalanced: QS with a 50 % weighting for academic and employer surveys and THE with field and year normalised citations plus a partial regional modification with an official weighting of 30% (the modification means that everybody except the top scorer gets a bonus for citations). The remarkable rise of Anglia Ruskin University to parity with Oxford and Princeton in this year’s THE research impact (citations) indicator and the high placing of the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile and the National University of Colombia in QS’s employers survey are evidence that these rankings continue to be implausible and unstable. To make higher education policy dependent on their fluctuations is very unwise.

This is particularly true of the two leading Irish universities, Trinity College Dublin (TCD)  and University College Dublin (UCD), which have in fact been advancing in the Round University Rankings produced by a Russian organisation and ShanghaiRanking’s Academic Ranking of World Universities. These two global rankings have methodologies that are generally stable and transparent.

I pointed out in 2015 that TCD had been steadily rising in the Shanghai ARWU  since 2004, especially in the Publications indicator (papers in the Science Citation Index - Expanded and the Social Science Citation Index) and PCP (productivity per capita, that is the combined indicator scores divided by the number of faculty). This year, to repeat an earlier post, TCD’s publication score again went up very slightly from 31 to 31.1 (27.1 in 2004) and the PCP quite significantly from 19 to 20.8 (13.9 in 2004), compared to top scores of 100 for Harvard and Caltech respectively.

UCD has also continued to do well in the Shanghai rankings with the publications score rising this year from 34.1 to 34.2 (27.3 in 2004) and PCP from 18.0 to 18.1 (8.1 in 2014).

The Shanghai rankings are, of course, famous for not counting the arts and humanities and not trying to measure anything related to teaching. The RUR rankings from Russia are based on Thomson Reuters data, also used by THE until two years ago and they do include publications in the humanities and teaching-related metrics. They have 12 out of the 13 indicators in the THE World University Rankings, plus eight others, but with a sensible weighting, for example 8% instead of 30% for field normalised citations.

The RUR rankings show that TCD rose from 174th overall in 2010 to 102nd in 2016. (193rd to 67th for research). UCD rose from 213th overall to 195th (157th to 69th for research) although some Irish universities such as NUI Galway, NUI Maynooth, University College Cork, and Dublin City University have fallen.

It is thoroughly disingenuous for Irish academics to claim that academic standards are declining because of a lack of funds. Perhaps they will do so in the future. But so far everything suggests that the two leading Irish universities are making steady progress especially in research.

The fall of UCD in this year’s THE rankings this year and TCD’s fall in 2015 and the fall of both in the QS rankings mean very little. When there are such large methodological changes it is pointless to discuss how to improve in the rankings. Methodological changes can be made and unmade and universities made and unmade as the Middle East Technical University found in 2015 when it fell from 85th placein the THE world rankings to below 501^st.

The Irish Times of November 8th  had an article by Philip O’Kane that proposed that Irish universities should combine in some ways to boost their position in the global rankings.

He suggested that:

“The only feasible course of action for Ireland to avert continued sinking in the world rankings is to create a new “International University of Ireland”.

This could be a world-class research university that consists exclusively of the internationally-visible parts of all our existing institutions, and to do so at marginal cost using joint academic appointments, joint facilities and joint student registration, in a highly flexible and dynamic manner.

Those parts that are not internationally visible would be excluded from this International University of Ireland.”

It sounds like he is proposing that universities maintain their separate identity for some things but present a united front for international matters. This was an idea that was proposed in India a while ago but was quickly shot down by Phil Baty of THE. It is most unlikely that universities could separate data for faculty, students, and income, and publications of their international bits and send the data to the rankers.

The idea of a full merger is more practical but could be pointless or even counter-productive. In 2012 a group of experts, headed by European Commissioner Frans  Van Vught, suggested that UCD and TCD be merged to become a single world class university.

The ironic thing about this idea is that a merger would help with the Shanghai rankings that university bosses are studiously pretending do not exist but would be of little or no use with the rankings that the bureaucrats and politicians do care about.

The Shanghai rankings are known for being as much about quantity as quality. A merger of TCD and UCD would produce a significant gain for the university by combining the number of publications, papers in Nature and Science, and highly cited researchers. It would do no good for Nobel and Fields awards since Trinity has two now and UCD none so the new institution would still only have two (ShanghaiRanking does not count Peace and Literature). Overall, it is likely that the new Irish super-university would rise about a dozen places in the Shanghai rankings, perhaps even getting into the top 150 (TCD is currently 162nd).

But it would probably not help with the rankings that university heads are so excited about. Many of the indicators in the QS and THE rankings are scaled in some way. You might get more citations by adding together those of TCD and UCD, for instance, but QS divide them by number of faculty which would also be combined if there was a merger. You could combine the incomes of TCD and UCD but then the combined income would be divided by the combined staff numbers.

The only place where a merger would be of any point is the survey criteria, 50% in QS and 33% in THE but the problem here is that the reputation of a new University of Dublin or Ireland or whatever it is called is likely to be inferior to that of TCD and UCD for some years to come. There are places where merging universities is a sensible way of pooling the strengths of a multitude of small specialist schools and research centres, for example France and Russia. But for Ireland, there is little point if the idea is to get ahead in the QS and THE  rankings.

It would make more sense for Irish universities to focus on the Shanghai rankings where, if present trends continue, TCD will catch up with Harvard in about 240 years although by then the peaks of the intellectual world will probably be in Seoul, Shanghai, Moscow, Warsaw and Tallinn. 

University rankings have become extremely influential over the last few years. This is not entirely a bad thing. The initial publication of the Shanghai rankings in 2003, for example, exposed the pretensions of many European universities revealing just how far behind they had fallen in scientific research.  It also showed China how far it had to go to achieve scientific parity with the West.

Unfortunately, rankings have also had malign effects. The THE and QS world rankings have acquired a great deal of respect, trust, even reverence that may not be entirely deserved. Both introduced significant methodological changes in 2015 and THE has made further changes in 2016 and the consequence of this is that there have been some remarkable rises and falls within the rankings that have had a lot of publicity but have little to do with any real change in quality.

In addition, both QS and THE have increased the number of ranked universities which can affect the mean score for indicators from which the processed scores given to the public are derived. Both have surveys that can be biased and subjective. Both are unbalanced: QS with a 50 % weighting for academic and employer surveys and THE with field and year normalised citations plus a partial regional modification with an official weighting of 30% (the modification means that everybody except the top scorer gets a bonus for citations). The remarkable rise of Anglia Ruskin University to parity with Oxford and Princeton in this year’s THE research impact (citations) indicator and the high placing of the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile and the National University of Colombia in QS’s employers survey are evidence that these rankings continue to be implausible and unstable. To make higher education policy dependent on their fluctuations is very unwise.

This is particularly true of the two leading Irish universities, Trinity College Dublin (TCD)  and University College Dublin (UCD), which have in fact been advancing in the Round University Rankings produced by a Russian organisation and ShanghaiRanking’s Academic Ranking of World Universities. These two global rankings have methodologies that are generally stable and transparent.

I pointed out in 2015 that TCD had been steadily rising in the Shanghai ARWU  since 2004, especially in the Publications indicator (papers in the Science Citation Index - Expanded and the Social Science Citation Index) and PCP (productivity per capita, that is the combined indicator scores divided by the number of faculty). This year, to repeat an earlier post, TCD’s publication score again went up very slightly from 31 to 31.1 (27.1 in 2004) and the PCP quite significantly from 19 to 20.8 (13.9 in 2004), compared to top scores of 100 for Harvard and Caltech respectively.

UCD has also continued to do well in the Shanghai rankings with the publications score rising this year from 34.1 to 34.2 (27.3 in 2004) and PCP from 18.0 to 18.1 (8.1 in 2014).

The Shanghai rankings are, of course, famous for not counting the arts and humanities and not trying to measure anything related to teaching. The RUR rankings from Russia are based on Thomson Reuters data, also used by THE until two years ago and they do include publications in the humanities and teaching-related metrics. They have 12 out of the 13 indicators in the THE World University Rankings, plus eight others, but with a sensible weighting, for example 8% instead of 30% for field normalised citations.

The RUR rankings show that TCD rose from 174th overall in 2010 to 102nd in 2016. (193rd to 67th for research). UCD rose from 213th overall to 195th (157th to 69th for research) although some Irish universities such as NUI Galway, NUI Maynooth, University College Cork, and Dublin City University have fallen.

It is thoroughly disingenuous for Irish academics to claim that academic standards are declining because of a lack of funds. Perhaps they will do so in the future. But so far everything suggests that the two leading Irish universities are making steady progress especially in research.

The fall of UCD in this year’s THE rankings this year and TCD’s fall in 2015 and the fall of both in the QS rankings mean very little. When there are such large methodological changes it is pointless to discuss how to improve in the rankings. Methodological changes can be made and unmade and universities made and unmade as the Middle East Technical University found in 2015 when it fell from 85th placein the THE world rankings to below 501^st.

The Irish Times of November 8th  had an article by Philip O’Kane that proposed that Irish universities should combine in some ways to boost their position in the global rankings.

He suggested that:

“The only feasible course of action for Ireland to avert continued sinking in the world rankings is to create a new “International University of Ireland”.

This could be a world-class research university that consists exclusively of the internationally-visible parts of all our existing institutions, and to do so at marginal cost using joint academic appointments, joint facilities and joint student registration, in a highly flexible and dynamic manner.

Those parts that are not internationally visible would be excluded from this International University of Ireland.”

It sounds like he is proposing that universities maintain their separate identity for some things but present a united front for international matters. This was an idea that was proposed in India a while ago but was quickly shot down by Phil Baty of THE. It is most unlikely that universities could separate data for faculty, students, and income, and publications of their international bits and send the data to the rankers.

The idea of a full merger is more practical but could be pointless or even counter-productive. In 2012 a group of experts, headed by European Commissioner Frans  Van Vught, suggested that UCD and TCD be merged to become a single world class university.

The ironic thing about this idea is that a merger would help with the Shanghai rankings that university bosses are studiously pretending do not exist but would be of little or no use with the rankings that the bureaucrats and politicians do care about.

The Shanghai rankings are known for being as much about quantity as quality. A merger of TCD and UCD would produce a significant gain for the university by combining the number of publications, papers in Nature and Science, and highly cited researchers. It would do no good for Nobel and Fields awards since Trinity has two now and UCD none so the new institution would still only have two (ShanghaiRanking does not count Peace and Literature). Overall, it is likely that the new Irish super-university would rise about a dozen places in the Shanghai rankings, perhaps even getting into the top 150 (TCD is currently 162nd).

But it would probably not help with the rankings that university heads are so excited about. Many of the indicators in the QS and THE rankings are scaled in some way. You might get more citations by adding together those of TCD and UCD, for instance, but QS divide them by number of faculty which would also be combined if there was a merger. You could combine the incomes of TCD and UCD but then the combined income would be divided by the combined staff numbers.

The only place where a merger would be of any point is the survey criteria, 50% in QS and 33% in THE but the problem here is that the reputation of a new University of Dublin or Ireland or whatever it is called is likely to be inferior to that of TCD and UCD for some years to come. There are places where merging universities is a sensible way of pooling the strengths of a multitude of small specialist schools and research centres, for example France and Russia. But for Ireland, there is little point if the idea is to get ahead in the QS and THE  rankings.

It would make more sense for Irish universities to focus on the Shanghai rankings where, if present trends continue, TCD will catch up with Harvard in about 240 years although by then the peaks of the intellectual world will probably be in Seoul, Shanghai, Moscow, Warsaw and Tallinn. 

Yale Engages with the Rankings

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Judul : Yale Engages with the Rankings
link : Yale Engages with the Rankings

Over the last few years, elite universities have become increasingly concerned with their status in the global rankings. A decade ago university heads were inclined to ignore rankings or to regard them as insignificant, biased or limited. The University of Texas at Austin, for example, did not take part in the 2010 Times Higher Education (THE) rankings although it relented and submitted data in 2011 after learning that other US public institutions had done so and had scored better than in the preceding THES-QS rankings

It seems that things are changing. Around the world there excellence initiatives, one element of which is often improving the position of aspiring universities in international rankings, are proliferating.

It should be a major concern that higher education policies and priorities are influenced or even determined by publications that are problematic and incomplete in several ways. Rankings count what can be counted and that usually means a strong emphasis on research. Indeed, in the case of the Taiwan, URAP and Shanghai rankings that is all they are concerned with. Attempts to measure teaching, especially undergraduate teaching, have been rather haphazard. Although the US News Best US Colleges ranking includes measures of class size, admission standards, course completion and peer evaluation indicators in global rankings such as THE and Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) focus on inputs such as staff student ratio or income that might have some relation to eventual student or graduate outcomes.

It is sad that some major universities are less interested in developing the assessment of teaching or student quality and more in adjusting their policies and missions to the agenda of the rankings, particularly the THE world rankings.

Yale is now jumping on the rankings carousel. For decades it has been happily sitting on top of the US News college rankings making up the top three along with Princeton and Harvard. But Yale does much less well in the current global rankings. This year it is ranked 11th by the Shanghai rankings, 9th among US universities, 15th by QS, 7th among US universities and behind Nanyang Technological University and Ecole Polytechnique Federale Lausanne, and 12th in THE world rankings, 8th in the USA.

And so:

"For an example of investing where Yale must be strong, I want to touch very briefly on rankings, although I share your nervousness about being overly reliant on what are far-from-perfect indicators. With our unabashed emphasis on undergraduate education, strong teaching in Yale College, and unsurpassed residential experience, Yale has long boasted one of the very highest-ranked colleges, perennially among the top three. In the ratings of world research universities, however, we tend to be somewhere between tenth and fifteenth. This discrepancy points to an opportunity, and that opportunity is science, as it is the sciences that most differentiate Yale from those above us on such lists."

The reasons for the difference between the US and the world rankings are that Yale is relatively small compared to the other Ivy League members and the leading state universities, that it is strong in the arts and humanities, and that it has a good reputation for undergraduate teaching.

One of the virtues of global ranking is the exposure of the weaknesses of western universities especially in the teaching of and research in STEM subjects and it does no harm for Yale to shift a bit from the humanities and social sciences to the hard sciences. To take account of research based rankings with a consistent methodology such as URAP, National Taiwan University or the Shanghai rankings is quite sensible.  But Yale is asking for trouble if it becomes overly concerned with rankings such as THE or QS that are inclined to destabilising changes in methodology, rely on subjective survey data, assign disproportionate weights to certain indicators, emphasise input such as income or faculty resources rather than actual achievement, are demonstrably biased, and include indicators that are extremely counter-intuitive (Anglia Ruskin with a research impact equal to Princeton and greater than Yale, Pontifical Catholic University of Chile 28th in the world for employer reputation) .

Yale would be better off if it encouraged the development of cross-national tools to measure student achievement and quality of teaching or ranking metrics that assigned more weight to the humanities and social sciences.

Over the last few years, elite universities have become increasingly concerned with their status in the global rankings. A decade ago university heads were inclined to ignore rankings or to regard them as insignificant, biased or limited. The University of Texas at Austin, for example, did not take part in the 2010 Times Higher Education (THE) rankings although it relented and submitted data in 2011 after learning that other US public institutions had done so and had scored better than in the preceding THES-QS rankings

It seems that things are changing. Around the world there excellence initiatives, one element of which is often improving the position of aspiring universities in international rankings, are proliferating.

It should be a major concern that higher education policies and priorities are influenced or even determined by publications that are problematic and incomplete in several ways. Rankings count what can be counted and that usually means a strong emphasis on research. Indeed, in the case of the Taiwan, URAP and Shanghai rankings that is all they are concerned with. Attempts to measure teaching, especially undergraduate teaching, have been rather haphazard. Although the US News Best US Colleges ranking includes measures of class size, admission standards, course completion and peer evaluation indicators in global rankings such as THE and Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) focus on inputs such as staff student ratio or income that might have some relation to eventual student or graduate outcomes.

It is sad that some major universities are less interested in developing the assessment of teaching or student quality and more in adjusting their policies and missions to the agenda of the rankings, particularly the THE world rankings.

Yale is now jumping on the rankings carousel. For decades it has been happily sitting on top of the US News college rankings making up the top three along with Princeton and Harvard. But Yale does much less well in the current global rankings. This year it is ranked 11th by the Shanghai rankings, 9th among US universities, 15th by QS, 7th among US universities and behind Nanyang Technological University and Ecole Polytechnique Federale Lausanne, and 12th in THE world rankings, 8th in the USA.

And so:

"For an example of investing where Yale must be strong, I want to touch very briefly on rankings, although I share your nervousness about being overly reliant on what are far-from-perfect indicators. With our unabashed emphasis on undergraduate education, strong teaching in Yale College, and unsurpassed residential experience, Yale has long boasted one of the very highest-ranked colleges, perennially among the top three. In the ratings of world research universities, however, we tend to be somewhere between tenth and fifteenth. This discrepancy points to an opportunity, and that opportunity is science, as it is the sciences that most differentiate Yale from those above us on such lists."

The reasons for the difference between the US and the world rankings are that Yale is relatively small compared to the other Ivy League members and the leading state universities, that it is strong in the arts and humanities, and that it has a good reputation for undergraduate teaching.

One of the virtues of global ranking is the exposure of the weaknesses of western universities especially in the teaching of and research in STEM subjects and it does no harm for Yale to shift a bit from the humanities and social sciences to the hard sciences. To take account of research based rankings with a consistent methodology such as URAP, National Taiwan University or the Shanghai rankings is quite sensible.  But Yale is asking for trouble if it becomes overly concerned with rankings such as THE or QS that are inclined to destabilising changes in methodology, rely on subjective survey data, assign disproportionate weights to certain indicators, emphasise input such as income or faculty resources rather than actual achievement, are demonstrably biased, and include indicators that are extremely counter-intuitive (Anglia Ruskin with a research impact equal to Princeton and greater than Yale, Pontifical Catholic University of Chile 28th in the world for employer reputation) .

Yale would be better off if it encouraged the development of cross-national tools to measure student achievement and quality of teaching or ranking metrics that assigned more weight to the humanities and social sciences.

TOP500 Supercomputer Rankings

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Judul : TOP500 Supercomputer Rankings
link : TOP500 Supercomputer Rankings

Every six months TOP500 publishes a list of the five hundred most powerful computer systems n the world. This is probably a good guide to the economic, scientific and technological future of the world's nation states.

The most noticeable change since November 2015 is that the number of supercomputers in China has risen dramatically from 108 to 171 systems while the USA has fallen from 200 to 171. Japan has fallen quite considerably from 37 to 27 and Germany and the UK by one each. France has added two supercomputers to reach 20.

In the whole of Africa there is exactly one supercomputer, in Cape Town. In the Middle East there are five, all in Saudi Arabia, three of them operated by Aramco.

Here is a list of countries with the number of computers in the top 500.

China 171
USA 171
Germany 32
Japan 27
France 20
UK 17
Poland 7
Italy 6
India  5
Russia 5
Saudi Arabia 5
South Korea 4
Sweden 4
Switzerland 4
Australia 3
Austria 3
Brazil 3
Netherlands 3
New Zealand 3
Denmark 2
Finland 2
Belgium 1
Canada 1
Czech Republic 1
Ireland 1
Norway 1
Singapore 1
South Africa 1
Spain 1

Every six months TOP500 publishes a list of the five hundred most powerful computer systems n the world. This is probably a good guide to the economic, scientific and technological future of the world's nation states.

The most noticeable change since November 2015 is that the number of supercomputers in China has risen dramatically from 108 to 171 systems while the USA has fallen from 200 to 171. Japan has fallen quite considerably from 37 to 27 and Germany and the UK by one each. France has added two supercomputers to reach 20.

In the whole of Africa there is exactly one supercomputer, in Cape Town. In the Middle East there are five, all in Saudi Arabia, three of them operated by Aramco.

Here is a list of countries with the number of computers in the top 500.

China 171
USA 171
Germany 32
Japan 27
France 20
UK 17
Poland 7
Italy 6
India  5
Russia 5
Saudi Arabia 5
South Korea 4
Sweden 4
Switzerland 4
Australia 3
Austria 3
Brazil 3
Netherlands 3
New Zealand 3
Denmark 2
Finland 2
Belgium 1
Canada 1
Czech Republic 1
Ireland 1
Norway 1
Singapore 1
South Africa 1
Spain 1

QS seeks a Passion Integrity Empowerment and Diversity compliant manager

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Judul : QS seeks a Passion Integrity Empowerment and Diversity compliant manager
link : QS seeks a Passion Integrity Empowerment and Diversity compliant manager

The big ranking brands seem to be suffering from a prolonged fit of megalomania, perhaps caused by the toxic gases of Brexit and the victory of the deplorables. The "trusted" THE, led by the "education secretary of the world", has just made a foray into the US college ranking  market, published a graduate employability ranking and is now going to the University of Johannesburg for a BRICS Plus Various Places summit.

Meanwhile the "revered" QS, creator of "incredibly successful ranking initiatives"  also appears to be getting ready for bigger and better things. They are advertising for a Ranking Manager who will be

"a suitably accomplished and inspirational leader", and possess "a combination of analytical capability, thought leadership and knowledge of the global higher education landscape" and " ensure an environment of Passion, Integrity, Empowerment and Diversity is maintained" and be "(h)ighly analytical with extensive data modelling experience" and have "great leadership attributes".

And so on and so on. Read it yourself. If you can get through to the end without laughing you could be a suitable candidate.

I can't wait to see who gets the job.

The big ranking brands seem to be suffering from a prolonged fit of megalomania, perhaps caused by the toxic gases of Brexit and the victory of the deplorables. The "trusted" THE, led by the "education secretary of the world", has just made a foray into the US college ranking  market, published a graduate employability ranking and is now going to the University of Johannesburg for a BRICS Plus Various Places summit.

Meanwhile the "revered" QS, creator of "incredibly successful ranking initiatives"  also appears to be getting ready for bigger and better things. They are advertising for a Ranking Manager who will be

"a suitably accomplished and inspirational leader", and possess "a combination of analytical capability, thought leadership and knowledge of the global higher education landscape" and " ensure an environment of Passion, Integrity, Empowerment and Diversity is maintained" and be "(h)ighly analytical with extensive data modelling experience" and have "great leadership attributes".

And so on and so on. Read it yourself. If you can get through to the end without laughing you could be a suitable candidate.

I can't wait to see who gets the job.

More on teaching-centred rankings

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Judul : More on teaching-centred rankings
link : More on teaching-centred rankings

The UK is proposing to add a Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) to the famous, or infamous, Research Excellence Framework (REF). The idea is that universities are  to be judged according to their teaching quality which is to be measured by how many students manage to graduate, how satisfied students are with their courses and whether graduates are employed or in postgraduate courses shortly after graduation.

There are apparently going to be big rewards for doing well according to these criteria. It seems that universities that want to charge high tuition fees must reach a certain level.

Does one have to be a hardened cynic to suspect that there is going to be a large amount of manipulation if this is put into effect? Universities will be ranked according to the proportion of students completing their degrees? They will make graduating requirements easier, abolish compulsory courses in difficult things like dead white poets, foreign languages or maths, or allow alternative methods of assessment, group work, art projects and so on. We have, for example, already seen how the number of first and upper second class degrees awarded by British universities has risen enormously in the last few years.

Universities will be graded by student satisfaction? Just let the students know, very subtly of course, that if they say their university is no good then employers are less likely to give them jobs. Employment or postgraduate courses six months after graduation? Lots of internships and easy admissions to postgraduate courses.

In any case, it is all probably futile. A look at the Guardian University Guide rankings in a recent post here shows that if you want to find out about student outcomes six months after graduation the most relevant number the is average entry tariff, that is 'A' level grades three or four years earlier.

I doubt very much that employers and graduate, professional and business schools are really interested in the difference between an A and an A* grade or even an A and a B. Bluntly, they choose from candidates who they think are intelligent and trainable, something which correlates highly with 'A' Level grades or, across the Anglosphere Lake, SAT, ACT and GRE scores, and display other non-cognitive characteristics such as conscientiousness and open-mindedness. Also, they tend to pick people who generally resemble themselves as much as possible. Employers and schools tend to select candidates from those universities that are more likely to produce large numbers of graduates with the desired attributes.

Any teaching assessment exercise that does not measure or attempt to measure the cognitive skills of graduates is likely to be of little value.

In June Times Higher Education (THE) ran a simulation of a ranking of UK universities that might result from the TEF exercise. There were three indicators, student completion of courses, student satisfaction and graduate destinations, that is number of graduates employed or in post graduate courses six months after graduation. In addition to absolute scores, universities were benchmarked for gender, ethnicity, age, disability and subject.

There are many questions about the methodology of THE exercise, some of which are raised in the comments on the THE report.

The THE simulation appears to confirm that students' academic ability is more important than anything else when it comes to their career prospects. Comparing the THE scores for graduate destinations (absolute) with the other indicators in the THE TEF simulation and the Guardian rankings we get the following correlations.

Graduate Destinations (THE absolute) and:

Average Entry Tariff (Guardian)  .772
Student completion (THE absolute)  .750
Staff student ratio (Guardian inverted)  .663
Spending per student (Guardian)  .612
Satisfaction with course (Guardian)  .486
Student satisfaction (THE absolute)  .472
Satisfaction with teaching (Guardian)  .443
Value added (Guardian)  .347
Satisfaction with feedback (Guardian)  -.239

So, a high score in the THE graduate destinations metric, like its counterpart in the Guardian rankings, is associated most closely with students' academic ability and their ability to finish their degree programmes, next with spending, moderately with overall satisfaction and satisfaction with teaching, and substantially less so with value added. Satisfaction with feedback has a negative association with career success narrowly defined.

Looking at the benchmarked score for Graduate Destinations we find that the correlations are more modest than with the absolute score. But average entry tariff is still a better predictor of graduate outcomes than value added.

Graduate Destinations (THE distance from benchmark) and:

Student completion (THE benchmarked) .487
Satisfaction with course (Guardian)  .404
Staff student ratio (Guardian inverted)  .385
Average entry tariff (Guardian)  .383
Spending per student (Guardian)  .383
Satisfaction with teaching (Guardian) .324
Student satisfaction (THE benchmarked)  .305
Value added (Guardian)  .255
Satisfaction with feedback  (Guardian)  .025

It is useful to know about student satisfaction and very useful for students to know how likely they are to finish their programmes. But until rankers and government agencies figure out how to estimate the subject knowledge and cognitive skills of graduates and the impact, if any, of universities then the current trend to teaching-centred rankings will not be helpful to anyone.

The UK is proposing to add a Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) to the famous, or infamous, Research Excellence Framework (REF). The idea is that universities are  to be judged according to their teaching quality which is to be measured by how many students manage to graduate, how satisfied students are with their courses and whether graduates are employed or in postgraduate courses shortly after graduation.

There are apparently going to be big rewards for doing well according to these criteria. It seems that universities that want to charge high tuition fees must reach a certain level.

Does one have to be a hardened cynic to suspect that there is going to be a large amount of manipulation if this is put into effect? Universities will be ranked according to the proportion of students completing their degrees? They will make graduating requirements easier, abolish compulsory courses in difficult things like dead white poets, foreign languages or maths, or allow alternative methods of assessment, group work, art projects and so on. We have, for example, already seen how the number of first and upper second class degrees awarded by British universities has risen enormously in the last few years.

Universities will be graded by student satisfaction? Just let the students know, very subtly of course, that if they say their university is no good then employers are less likely to give them jobs. Employment or postgraduate courses six months after graduation? Lots of internships and easy admissions to postgraduate courses.

In any case, it is all probably futile. A look at the Guardian University Guide rankings in a recent post here shows that if you want to find out about student outcomes six months after graduation the most relevant number the is average entry tariff, that is 'A' level grades three or four years earlier.

I doubt very much that employers and graduate, professional and business schools are really interested in the difference between an A and an A* grade or even an A and a B. Bluntly, they choose from candidates who they think are intelligent and trainable, something which correlates highly with 'A' Level grades or, across the Anglosphere Lake, SAT, ACT and GRE scores, and display other non-cognitive characteristics such as conscientiousness and open-mindedness. Also, they tend to pick people who generally resemble themselves as much as possible. Employers and schools tend to select candidates from those universities that are more likely to produce large numbers of graduates with the desired attributes.

Any teaching assessment exercise that does not measure or attempt to measure the cognitive skills of graduates is likely to be of little value.

In June Times Higher Education (THE) ran a simulation of a ranking of UK universities that might result from the TEF exercise. There were three indicators, student completion of courses, student satisfaction and graduate destinations, that is number of graduates employed or in post graduate courses six months after graduation. In addition to absolute scores, universities were benchmarked for gender, ethnicity, age, disability and subject.

There are many questions about the methodology of THE exercise, some of which are raised in the comments on the THE report.

The THE simulation appears to confirm that students' academic ability is more important than anything else when it comes to their career prospects. Comparing the THE scores for graduate destinations (absolute) with the other indicators in the THE TEF simulation and the Guardian rankings we get the following correlations.

Graduate Destinations (THE absolute) and:

Average Entry Tariff (Guardian)  .772
Student completion (THE absolute)  .750
Staff student ratio (Guardian inverted)  .663
Spending per student (Guardian)  .612
Satisfaction with course (Guardian)  .486
Student satisfaction (THE absolute)  .472
Satisfaction with teaching (Guardian)  .443
Value added (Guardian)  .347
Satisfaction with feedback (Guardian)  -.239

So, a high score in the THE graduate destinations metric, like its counterpart in the Guardian rankings, is associated most closely with students' academic ability and their ability to finish their degree programmes, next with spending, moderately with overall satisfaction and satisfaction with teaching, and substantially less so with value added. Satisfaction with feedback has a negative association with career success narrowly defined.

Looking at the benchmarked score for Graduate Destinations we find that the correlations are more modest than with the absolute score. But average entry tariff is still a better predictor of graduate outcomes than value added.

Graduate Destinations (THE distance from benchmark) and:

Student completion (THE benchmarked) .487
Satisfaction with course (Guardian)  .404
Staff student ratio (Guardian inverted)  .385
Average entry tariff (Guardian)  .383
Spending per student (Guardian)  .383
Satisfaction with teaching (Guardian) .324
Student satisfaction (THE benchmarked)  .305
Value added (Guardian)  .255
Satisfaction with feedback  (Guardian)  .025

It is useful to know about student satisfaction and very useful for students to know how likely they are to finish their programmes. But until rankers and government agencies figure out how to estimate the subject knowledge and cognitive skills of graduates and the impact, if any, of universities then the current trend to teaching-centred rankings will not be helpful to anyone.

NORTH KOREA: Some advice on how to become a world-class university

- Hallo sahabat Berita Hari ini, Pada Artikel yang anda baca kali ini dengan judul , kami telah mempersiapkan artikel ini dengan baik untuk anda baca dan ambil informasi didalamnya. mudah-mudahan isi postingan yang kami tulis ini dapat anda pahami. baiklah, selamat membaca.

Judul : NORTH KOREA: Some advice on how to become a world-class university
link : NORTH KOREA: Some advice on how to become a world-class university

The October 8th post has been republished in University World news

NORTH KOREA

Some advice on how to become a world-class university

Richard Holmes21 October 2016 Issue No:433

The October 8th post has been republished in University World news

NORTH KOREA

Some advice on how to become a world-class university

Richard Holmes21 October 2016 Issue No:433

More lamentation from Dublin

- Hallo sahabat Berita Hari ini, Pada Artikel yang anda baca kali ini dengan judul , kami telah mempersiapkan artikel ini dengan baik untuk anda baca dan ambil informasi didalamnya. mudah-mudahan isi postingan yang kami tulis ini dapat anda pahami. baiklah, selamat membaca.

Judul : More lamentation from Dublin
link : More lamentation from Dublin

Rankings have become a major weapon in the struggle of universities around the world to get their fair share or what they think is their fair share of public money. The Times Higher Education (THE) world and regional rankings are especially useful in this regard. They have a well known brand name, occasionally confused with the "Times of London", and sponsor prestigious summits at which rankers, political leaders and university heads wallow together in a warm bath of mutual flattery.

In addition, the THE rankings are highly volatile with significant methodological changes in 2011, 2015 and 2016. Another source of instability is the growing number of ranked universities. The scores used for calculating the various indicators in these rankings are not raw but standardised scores derived from means and standard deviations. So if there is an influx of new universities then mean scores are likely to change and consequently the processed scores of those above or below the mean.

The THE rankings can be interpreted to provide useful arguments whatever happens. If Western universities rise that is a sign of authentic excellence but one that is threatened by reduced funding, restrictions on foreign students and researchers, and reputations sullied by xenophobic electorates. If they fall that means of course that those threats have materialised.

The QS rankings are also sometimes unstable, having made significant methodological changes in 2015 and giving a 50% weighting to very subjective reputation indicators.

Irish universities seem to be especially fond of using these rankings as a ploy to gain public favour and largess. In 2015 Ireland's top university, Trinity College Dublin (TCD), fell seven places in the QS world rankings and 22 places in THE's.

TCD announced of course that government cuts had a lot do with it. The Dean of Research said:

“Notwithstanding these combined achievements the cuts in funding and increased investments made by our global competition, continue to have a direct impact on the rankings. Trinity is battling against intense international competition, particularly from Asian universities and from certain European countries where governments are investing heavily in higher education. The continued reduction in government investment in Irish universities has impacted negatively on the international standing of our universities and our ability to compete in a global arena.”“Trinity’s top 100 position globally and top 30 in Europe is remarkable in the context of its reduced income. Trinity’s annual budget per academic is 45% lower than that of the average university in the world top 200.  It is to the credit of Trinity’s dedicated teaching and research staff that the University continues to maintain its global position against such challenges.”

“As a knowledge economy we need an excellent competitive education system.  Trinity remains a world leading research-intensive university and the knowledge and innovation created are critical for the economic development of Ireland.”

I pointed out in 2015 that TCD had been steadily rising in the Shanghai ARWU rankings since 2004, especially in the Publications indicator (papers in the Science Citation Index and the Social Science Citation Index) and PCP (productivity per capita, that is the combined indicator scores divided by the number of faculty). This year, TCD's publication score again went up very slightly from 31 to 31.1 and the PCP quite significantly from 19 to 20.8, compared to top scores of 100 for Harvard and Caltech respectively.

University College Dublin has also continued to do well in the Shanghai rankings with the publications score rising this year from 34.1 (27.3 in 2004) to 34.2 and PCP from 18.0 (8.1 in 2014) to 18.1.

The Shanghai rankings are famous for not counting the arts and humanities or trying to measure anything related to teaching. The RUR rankings from Russia are based on Thomson Reuters data, also used by THE until two years ago and they do include publications in the humanities and teaching-related metrics. They have 12 out of the 13 indicators in the THE world rankings, plus eight others, but with a sensible weighting, for example 8% instead of 30% for field normalised citations.

The RUR rankings show that TCD rose from 174th overall in 2010 to 102nd in 2016. (193rd to 67th for research).

University College Dublin  (UCD) rose from 213th overall to 195th (157th to 69th for research) although some Irish universities, NUI Galway, NUI Maynooth, University College Cork, and Dublin City University, have fallen.

Nonetheless TCD decided in March of this year to develop a rankings strategy  aimed at QS and THE with a Rankings Steering Group chaired by the Provost. The competence and knowledge displayed by such groups and committees often have little relationship to the status and salaries of its members and that appears to be the case for TCD.

It seems that there was a misplaced decimal point in the financial data submitted to THE for the 2016 rankings and that would have left TCD with a lower rating than it deserved and so it has withdrawn from the rankings until the error is corrected.

If TCD cannot find an administrator or a statistician to check things like that it really has no business asking for taxpayers' money. I suspect that decimal points are not misplaced -- or if they are it is to the right rather than the left --  in submissions for grants or subsidies.

This raises the question of whether the THE checking procedures are adequate. I was under the impression that if there was a change of 20% then red flags would start waving. For THE to allow a large change in reported income and therefore at least one, maybe two or three, income indicators sounds rather odd. What about that unique game changing audit?

Meanwhile UCD, 176th in the THE rankings last year, has dropped out of the top 200 altogether.

The  QS  rankings were also bad news for Ireland. Every university fell except for NUI Galway and there were none in the top 100.

But has there in fact been any real decline in the quality of TCD and UCD?

The evidence of RUR and the Shanghai rankings is that the two main universities are steadily improving or at least  holding their own, especially with regard to research. Possibly less highly regarded places like NUI Galway and NUI Maynooth are struggling but that could be fairly easy to remedy.

The Irish Universities Association issued a statement:

'The continued slide of the Irish Universities in the QS World University Rankings should be greeted with alarm. Strenuous efforts on the part of the universities has resulted in strong performance on some measures in the rankings such as those relating to research citations and internationalisation of the staff and student cohort. Unfortunately, this good work is being undermined by the negative impact of underfunding on key indicators such as the student:faculty ratio. The latter is highly influential in scoring in the QS rankings.

It would also appear likely that almost a decade of austerity is spilling over into the reputational component of the rankings, with consequent negative repercussions. IUA Chief Executive, Ned Costello said: “we can no longer hide from the corrosive effect which years of cutbacks are having on our higher education system. At a time when we are more dependent than ever on the talent of our people for our economic future, we simply must invest in our universities. An immediate injection of funding is required in the upcoming Budget and Estimates to fund more lecturers, deliver smaller group teaching and restore quality in our system.” '

The decline of TCD and and UCD in the QS and THE rankings cannot reasonably be attributed to any real deficiencies on the part of those universities. A decline in the number of lecturers would have a negative effect on the faculty student metric but would help indicators scaled for faculty size. The alleged decline is largely a consequence of methodological changes and adjustments, the instability resulting from the influx of new universities and growing ranking sophistication in other places.

It is a shame that researchers and scholars should collude with those rankings that show them in a bad light while ignoring more stable and less biased ones that show a continuing and genuine improvement especially in research.

Rankings have become a major weapon in the struggle of universities around the world to get their fair share or what they think is their fair share of public money. The Times Higher Education (THE) world and regional rankings are especially useful in this regard. They have a well known brand name, occasionally confused with the "Times of London", and sponsor prestigious summits at which rankers, political leaders and university heads wallow together in a warm bath of mutual flattery.

In addition, the THE rankings are highly volatile with significant methodological changes in 2011, 2015 and 2016. Another source of instability is the growing number of ranked universities. The scores used for calculating the various indicators in these rankings are not raw but standardised scores derived from means and standard deviations. So if there is an influx of new universities then mean scores are likely to change and consequently the processed scores of those above or below the mean.

The THE rankings can be interpreted to provide useful arguments whatever happens. If Western universities rise that is a sign of authentic excellence but one that is threatened by reduced funding, restrictions on foreign students and researchers, and reputations sullied by xenophobic electorates. If they fall that means of course that those threats have materialised.

The QS rankings are also sometimes unstable, having made significant methodological changes in 2015 and giving a 50% weighting to very subjective reputation indicators.

Irish universities seem to be especially fond of using these rankings as a ploy to gain public favour and largess. In 2015 Ireland's top university, Trinity College Dublin (TCD), fell seven places in the QS world rankings and 22 places in THE's.

TCD announced of course that government cuts had a lot do with it. The Dean of Research said:

“Notwithstanding these combined achievements the cuts in funding and increased investments made by our global competition, continue to have a direct impact on the rankings. Trinity is battling against intense international competition, particularly from Asian universities and from certain European countries where governments are investing heavily in higher education. The continued reduction in government investment in Irish universities has impacted negatively on the international standing of our universities and our ability to compete in a global arena.”“Trinity’s top 100 position globally and top 30 in Europe is remarkable in the context of its reduced income. Trinity’s annual budget per academic is 45% lower than that of the average university in the world top 200.  It is to the credit of Trinity’s dedicated teaching and research staff that the University continues to maintain its global position against such challenges.”

“As a knowledge economy we need an excellent competitive education system.  Trinity remains a world leading research-intensive university and the knowledge and innovation created are critical for the economic development of Ireland.”

I pointed out in 2015 that TCD had been steadily rising in the Shanghai ARWU rankings since 2004, especially in the Publications indicator (papers in the Science Citation Index and the Social Science Citation Index) and PCP (productivity per capita, that is the combined indicator scores divided by the number of faculty). This year, TCD's publication score again went up very slightly from 31 to 31.1 and the PCP quite significantly from 19 to 20.8, compared to top scores of 100 for Harvard and Caltech respectively.

University College Dublin has also continued to do well in the Shanghai rankings with the publications score rising this year from 34.1 (27.3 in 2004) to 34.2 and PCP from 18.0 (8.1 in 2014) to 18.1.

The Shanghai rankings are famous for not counting the arts and humanities or trying to measure anything related to teaching. The RUR rankings from Russia are based on Thomson Reuters data, also used by THE until two years ago and they do include publications in the humanities and teaching-related metrics. They have 12 out of the 13 indicators in the THE world rankings, plus eight others, but with a sensible weighting, for example 8% instead of 30% for field normalised citations.

The RUR rankings show that TCD rose from 174th overall in 2010 to 102nd in 2016. (193rd to 67th for research).

University College Dublin  (UCD) rose from 213th overall to 195th (157th to 69th for research) although some Irish universities, NUI Galway, NUI Maynooth, University College Cork, and Dublin City University, have fallen.

Nonetheless TCD decided in March of this year to develop a rankings strategy  aimed at QS and THE with a Rankings Steering Group chaired by the Provost. The competence and knowledge displayed by such groups and committees often have little relationship to the status and salaries of its members and that appears to be the case for TCD.

It seems that there was a misplaced decimal point in the financial data submitted to THE for the 2016 rankings and that would have left TCD with a lower rating than it deserved and so it has withdrawn from the rankings until the error is corrected.

If TCD cannot find an administrator or a statistician to check things like that it really has no business asking for taxpayers' money. I suspect that decimal points are not misplaced -- or if they are it is to the right rather than the left --  in submissions for grants or subsidies.

This raises the question of whether the THE checking procedures are adequate. I was under the impression that if there was a change of 20% then red flags would start waving. For THE to allow a large change in reported income and therefore at least one, maybe two or three, income indicators sounds rather odd. What about that unique game changing audit?

Meanwhile UCD, 176th in the THE rankings last year, has dropped out of the top 200 altogether.

The  QS  rankings were also bad news for Ireland. Every university fell except for NUI Galway and there were none in the top 100.

But has there in fact been any real decline in the quality of TCD and UCD?

The evidence of RUR and the Shanghai rankings is that the two main universities are steadily improving or at least  holding their own, especially with regard to research. Possibly less highly regarded places like NUI Galway and NUI Maynooth are struggling but that could be fairly easy to remedy.

The Irish Universities Association issued a statement:

'The continued slide of the Irish Universities in the QS World University Rankings should be greeted with alarm. Strenuous efforts on the part of the universities has resulted in strong performance on some measures in the rankings such as those relating to research citations and internationalisation of the staff and student cohort. Unfortunately, this good work is being undermined by the negative impact of underfunding on key indicators such as the student:faculty ratio. The latter is highly influential in scoring in the QS rankings.

It would also appear likely that almost a decade of austerity is spilling over into the reputational component of the rankings, with consequent negative repercussions. IUA Chief Executive, Ned Costello said: “we can no longer hide from the corrosive effect which years of cutbacks are having on our higher education system. At a time when we are more dependent than ever on the talent of our people for our economic future, we simply must invest in our universities. An immediate injection of funding is required in the upcoming Budget and Estimates to fund more lecturers, deliver smaller group teaching and restore quality in our system.” '

The decline of TCD and and UCD in the QS and THE rankings cannot reasonably be attributed to any real deficiencies on the part of those universities. A decline in the number of lecturers would have a negative effect on the faculty student metric but would help indicators scaled for faculty size. The alleged decline is largely a consequence of methodological changes and adjustments, the instability resulting from the influx of new universities and growing ranking sophistication in other places.

It is a shame that researchers and scholars should collude with those rankings that show them in a bad light while ignoring more stable and less biased ones that show a continuing and genuine improvement especially in research.