ON TOP OF THE WORLD
20 Sep 2010
Three world university rankings have been released.
The world university rankings have just been released by three ranking agencies — Times Higher Education World University Rankings, Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU), compiled by Shanghai Jiao Tong University, and the QS World University Rankings. In an unexpected comeback, the University of Cambridge, has topped the QS World University Rankings this year — despite major slashing of funds from the government of the United Kingdom (UK) for 2010-11.
Harvard University, in the United States (US), has topped both the ARWU and Times Higher Education World University Rankings. In fact, the US clearly dominates. While the QS rankings have six US universities in the Top Ten, Times Higher Education World University Rankings have US universities bagging the top five spots. In fact, the US has bagged seven of the top ten places and 27 of its universities figure in the top 50. In the ARWU rankings, the top four positions have been bagged by American universities, while 17 of the top 20 are American universities.
Reflecting on this domination, experts feel that apart from offering a good salary to its academics (thus ensuring a strong faculty), the US’ budget for tertiary education is almost twice that of its competitors.
Meanwhile, Hong Kong is making its presence felt. In both the QS and Times Higher Education World University Rankings, Hong Kong ranks 23rd and 21st respectively. Also, Taiwan has bagged a decent place across all three rankings. Thailand, Israel, South Korea and Turkey are some of the other nations that feature in at least two, if not all, of the three world rankings being discussed.
However, India finds no place in the top 100 in any of the three rankings. While IIT (Mumbai) is ranked at 187 in the QS rankings, India does not figure anywhere in the top 200 in the other two rankings.
RANKING METHODOLOGY
Though methodology used by ranking agencies has always generated controversy, global rankings do hold importance for the academic community across the world. Steve Young, Senior Pro-Vice-Chancellor, University of Cambridge, says, “While university league tables tend to over-simplify the range of achievements at institutions, it is particularly pleasing to note that the excellence of the transformative research carried out at Cambridge is so well regarded by fellow academics worldwide.”
This year, following criticism about placing too much emphasis on peer review in its earlier methodology, Times Higher Education World University Rankings has developed a new methodology with its new data partner, Thomson Reuters. Phil Baty, Editor, Times Higher Education World University Rankings, explains, “An important principle of the new Times Higher Education World University Rankings is that all universities we list have actively co-operated with the system and signed off their data.”
"This system,” he says, “is designed to be a useful and rigorous tool for the global higher education community.”
“However,” he continues, “it is unfortunate that we did not manage to collect as much information from India this time as we would have liked; which is a real shame for India. The world needs to get a clear sense of its higher education provisions, as expectations are so high and India's potential is so great.”
As to QS’ source of data, Ben Sowter, Head of Research, QS Intelligence Unit, says, “QS utilises a variety of sources. Beyond the welldocumented surveys of academics and employers, we draw citations data from Scopus (a database maintained by Elsevier), which is the world’s largest abstract and citation database; we refer to a wide range of national statistics sources such as HESA (UK), NCES (US) and JASSO (Japan). Where such bodies are unavailable or carry incomplete data we refer to university websites. In addition, we invite each university to submit data directly to us. All data are checked against previous submissions and against corroborating sources where available.”
In addition, universities with significant amount of papers indexed by Science Citation Index-Expanded (SCIE) and Social Science Citation Index (SSCI) are also included. In total, more than 1,000 universities are actually ranked and the best 500 are published on the web.
RANKING RELEVANCE
According to Sarah Cunnane, a reporter at Times Higher Education, UK, one option while beginning a global search is scouring one of the annual world university rankings. Despite limitations, she feels they give a good idea about a university's standing.
For Indian students, rankings are important. As Atreyee Bhattacharya, all set to leave for MIT, says, “Global rankings play a big role in the choice of a university. Apart from offering a perspective about a university's core strengths and overall profile, it helps one to figure out one's chances vis-à-vis the best universities in the world.”
Hazel Siromoni, CEO, Indo-Canadian Business Chamber, who earlier worked with the Canadian Education Centre (CEC), maintains rankings are important for students and parents, as the first point of reference when they begin their research. “Subsequently, discussions with representatives and students from universities also influences a student's decision, if they feel the programme is good and suits their needs,” she adds.
However, Shreya Chowdhury, a London School of Economics (LSE) alumnus who is applying to Bschools in the US, says that rankings do matter but that is not the primary deciding factor.
Considering the fact that top ranked universities are keen to open a campus in India, are Indian students likely to choose a ranked university over an Indian university?
“Not really,” says Narendra Jadhav, Member, Planning Commission, adding that Indian students will certainly give weightage to other issues such as the fee structure.
For more information visit : Times of India