Times Higher Education Supplement 2007 Ranking

[chenchow]

Guess most of us, who have been reading newspapers have been rocked by a reality. None of the Malaysian universities manage to get into Top 200 of the Times Higher Education Supplement ranking. While it is just a mere ranking, it does impact a lot! Universiti Malaya and Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia both drop out of top 200. Universiti of Chulalongkorn from Thailand do drop out of top 200 too.

What goes wrong? Universiti Malaya drops from 85 to 169 to 192 to 246 position. UKM goes up from 289 to 185 last year, but drops to 309 this year. USM goes up from 326 to 277 last year, but drops to 307 this year. UPM goes up from 394 to 292 last year, but drops to 364 this year.

The criteria for this year is 40% Peer Review, 10% Recruiter Review, 20% Faculty:Student Ratio, 20% of Citations, 5% International Students, 5% International Faculty.

Universiti Malaya has improved in terms of Recruiter Review, International Students and International Faculty. In terms of international students, total international students go up from 1126 to 3073. Really within a year, UM is now full of international students. For international faculty, it has gone up from 115 to 323. Thesis or publications have gone up to more than 3,000 too, although this figure is still very low, and is one of the main reasons for UM low ranking.

So, whose fault is it? What kind our local universities do? Does this drop of ranking mean our quality continue to slide? Does this mean that others are growing faster than we do? What really goes wrong? We should really go down into the details to find out and really work hard!

Lets look at the ranking. My alma mater, Cornell drops from 15 to 20. NUS drops from 19 to 33, whereas Peking University drops from 14 to 36. Stanford University drops from 6 to 19, whereas UC Berkeley drops from 8 to 22. MIT drops from 4 to 10, whereas LSE drops from 17 to 59. Washington University in St. Louis drops from 48 to 161. Macquarie from 82 to 168.

So, if everyone is dropping, which universities went up? Imperial College from 9 to 5. Princeton from 10 to 6, University of Chicago from 11 to 7. University College of London 25 to 9. McGill 21 to 12. Penn 26 to 14. University of Hong Kong 33 to 18. Carnegie Mellon University 35 to 20. King's College London 46 to 24. Brown from 54 to 32 etc.

So, does this ranking matters at all? What causes those certain universities to drop a lot? Does those % ratings matter? Would student:faculty ratio matters a lot? Would 10 student:1 faculty vs 7 student: 1 faculty matters a lot? It might not, but the ranking would show greater difference.

Moving forward, what can we do to strengthen our universities? Would these 4 research universities continue to slide or can buck the trend and improve? What needs to be done? What kind of KPI needs to be institutionalized? Can the public support their alma mater more?

Hope that fellow ReComers could discuss on this issue in this thread.

[kintaro_kun]

Guess most of us, who have been reading newspapers have been rocked by a reality.

Hope that fellow ReComers could discuss on this issue in this thread.

"rocked"? not really.

anyway,

"Quack"quarelli Symonds did mention that there were some changes as to how unis were evaluated.

1. they no longer get their citations info from ISI, but from scopus.

2. they have further enforced measures that prevent academics ranking their own unis, as part of the peer review process, to minimise the bias academics may have for their own institutions.

how these two changes have affected the rankings of individual unis, is open for debate for all recommers.

but then, the overall mediocre system of msian institutions cannot escape discussions on msian unis. lets open this discussion for overseas unis as well, instead of just boring ourselves with copy-and-paste arguments for our local ones.

finally UPenn joins its rightful place in the top 20. i was utterly horrified when it was ranked lower than NUS in the previous years.

[kintaro_kun]

The criteria for this year is 40% Peer Review, 10% Recruiter Review, 20% Faculty:Student Ratio, 20% of Citations, 5% International Students, 5% International Faculty.

Universiti Malaya has improved in terms of Recruiter Review, International Students and International Faculty. In terms of international students, total international students go up from 1126 to 3073. Really within a year, UM is now full of international students. For international faculty, it has gone up from 115 to 323. Thesis or publications have gone up to more than 3,000 too, although this figure is still very low, and is one of the main reasons for UM low ranking.

let me start with a lullaby.

international students and faculty numbers can easily be improved. not that any requires the word "quality" in front of them.

citations per faculty extend more than just "theses and publications". do student honours theses count as publications? most academic research done by msian academics are either of low quality and hence can only be published in low impact local journals (God-forbid, only malay-language journals, who would ever read them?), or are just geared for further medals at invention road shows. it is possible to have 10,000 publications, with 0(zero) work cited by academics overseas. quantity versus quality prevails. a publication in "science", "nature", etc, is quite different from a 2-page advertorial on the benefits of herbal toothpaste in KOSMO or MASTIKA. no kidding! i've seen some lecturers in msian unis having them in their "publications" section.

perhaps the most stressing thing is, the impact of the 2nd change THES has done, in relations to the peer review evaluation. isit a possibilty that msian (and some foreign) unis got their high ranks in part of their own academics pushing their own unis up in the reviews, and hence the decline this year after the change? lets think about it.

[bush]

McGill..........beraklah.......

[kintaro_kun]

Mc Gill by itself isnt a bad uni, but i do agree at the 12th spot, its highly overrated. its ridiculous that toronto and british columbia are ranked lower than mc gill........but its the same when UPenn was ranked lower than NUS the few years back! totally inconceivable!!

anyway, the link to the PDF file of the rankings is here:
http://www.topmba.com/fileadmin/pdfs/2007_Top_200_Compact.pdf

[bush]

U of T, UBC and McGill are almost the same......just that McGill has a better reputation in the States. More people know about McGill than any other Canadian universities.

[bluez_aspic]

Come to think of it, bush - what are you studying, and which institution?

[capablanca]

Looking at the recent fluctuation. I won't worry that much. Most of the ranking are bound to correct themselves eventually or does it actually reveal the lower quality of our country public education system? Hmmm...

[exec]

Well I do think that the ranking system has a smell of "Favoring the British universities". MIT's on the 10th? ....

[Miracle_seed]

Well I do think that the ranking system has a smell of "Favoring the British universities". MIT's on the 10th? ....
It's inevitable that rankings released by UK newspaper would favour British universities, and also Western universities...

However, in a ranking released by a university in China (Forgot the name), none of Malaysian universities is in the top 500 (if I'm not mistaken).... Though this ranking is not widely known, but still in another system, Malaysian unversities fail yet again.... I wonder whether Malaysian universities will only do well in "kampung" rankings......

[kintaro_kun]

Shanghai Jiao Tong is the name. it is not only widely known, but also deemed to be a more accurate measure of ranking universities. of course, this is also debatable.

[lXl]

So, if everyone is dropping, which universities went up? Imperial College from 9 to 5. Princeton from 10 to 6, University of Chicago from 11 to 7. University College of London 25 to 9. McGill 21 to 12. Penn 26 to 14. University of Hong Kong 33 to 18. Carnegie Mellon University 35 to 20. King's College London 46 to 24. Brown from 54 to 32 etc.


yay to penn :D

anyhow, I don't believe that the ranking matter much (its 40% peer review !!!! WTF). Nobody is not going to apply to MIT just because its at no. 10. Basically, the top 50 universities or so do not have much differences between them (except for oxbridge, HYPM who are in a different league altogether).

About msia' universities, I am perplexed that Universiti Malaya has actually increased its total international students from 1126 to 3073 in a year ! Thats roughly 170% increase?!! The international faculty has gone up from 115 to 323? 180% increase in a year ?!!! Wow. Is this a desperate attempt to 'boost' UM's ranking ?

[youngyew]

While the difference of rankings in the range of, say, no. 1 to no. 50 doesn't mean much; when a university is consistently ranked lower than the hundredth place, and has been dropping places every year, it still does matter quite a lot. Our Higher Education Minister and PM themselves concurred to the fact too.

[exec]

Our Higher Education Minister and PM themselves concurred to the fact too.

Yes, they concurred, and concurred only without doing anything useful to help it.

[chenchow]

Our Higher Education Minister and PM themselves concurred to the fact too.

Yes, they concurred, and concurred only without doing anything useful to help it.

I won't say that our Prime Minister is not concerned. He had a session with some Ivy League and other top universities' alumni recently, and he managed to receive some feedback/suggestions from those alumni.

[wgy589]

den how?

[jane_gun]

Eventhough the TIMES ranking can give a rough indication on how each uni fares, I feel that it can be very misleading at times. When someone wants to pursue a course at uni, it's not just the TIMES ranking that matters (excluding all other factors like tuition fee and cost of living) but more importantly, how good that uni is for that particular course that the individual is aiming at. A uni may not fare as well as other unis according to TIMES but may beat those unis for a particular course. There are actually online sites out there that rank unis according to courses (which I believe to give a better indication) and compare different unis for the one same course (i.e. strengths and weaknesses) - these sites, however, charge a certain fee before you can use their services. Personally, I've never bothered to pay to use the service but perhaps these info should be made available to everyone for free (though if this was the case, they won't be earning any money, lol)... Then again, students should try to do their own research e.g. asking seniors from different unis, etc. and not let the TIMES ranking influence their decisions too much (I nearly made this mistake myself previously). Thank goodness for ReCom - there are always seniors available to help offer info! =)

[capablanca]

Times actually do provide rankings for popular courses such as economics... The down side for this, they only provide it for British universities.

[kintaro_kun]

these sites, however, charge a certain fee before you can use their services. Personally, I've never bothered to pay to use the service but perhaps these info should be made available to everyone for free (though if this was the case, they won't be earning any money, lol)

are you refering to the GUG?

[jane_gun]

are you refering to the GUG?

Yup! Too bad it ain't free... And students should always be aware that a highly-ranked uni cannot be compared to a course-specialised uni of lower ranking just based solely on overall TIMES ranking - like I said before, it can be misleading...

[kintaro_kun]

when using the GUG, you really have to distinguish the more useful stats from the rather irrelevant ones. some aussie unis can get carried away promoting/advertising themselves citing they are 5 star unis without mentioning the areas in which they actually got 5 stars. surely getting 5 stars in indigenious participation isnt anymore relevant to international students than say, 5 stars in the gender balance rating.

i have doubts over the "australian university of the year" award. what are the criteria? what isit about? who are the judges? the winning unis seem to go on a rotational basis since nearly every aussie uni had won it before. its just...shady.

[jane_gun]

That is why students should not just depend on what those reports say... It's important for students to discern for themselves...