University rankings

How seriously should we take the Times Higher Education Supplement World University Rankings?

Very seriously. Not because the rankings are accurate, since there are a number of questions that can be and have been raised about the criteria used, but because foundations around the world prefer to fund universities on the list rather than those not on the list.

It makes good business sense for universities to try to get high rankings in this annual survey.

Times has announced the top 400 universities in the world. On top of the list are the usual ones (in order): Harvard (undisputed 1st place), Cambridge, Oxford, and Yale (tied for 2nd place), Imperial College London, Princeton, Caltech and Chicago (tied for 7th place), University College London, and MIT.

Oxford, Yale, Imperial, Princeton, and Chicago moved up from their rankings last year. The most spectacular rise is recorded by University College London, which was only 25th last year. Going down in reputation and quality are MIT, Stanford (6th last year to 19th this year), and UC Berkeley (8th to 22nd).

How do universities in Asia compare with the best in the world?

The top Asian, non-ASEAN university is Tokyo (17th), followed closely by Hong Kong (18th from 33rd last year). Kyoto is in 25th place, followed by Peking (36th), Chinese University of Hong Kong (38th), Tsinghua (40th), Osaka (48th), Seoul (51st), and Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (53rd).

For ASEAN, the top university is still National University of Singapore, though it has moved down to 33rd from 19th last year. Following NUS are Nanyang (69th), Chulalongkorn (223rd), Malaya (246th), Sains (307th), Kebangsaan (309th), Gadja Mada (360th), Putra (364th), Bandung (369th), and Indonesia (395th).

The University of the Philippines is tied for 398th to 400th place, at the very bottom of the list but at least still world-ranked.

The Times criteria have remained the same: peer review of research quality (40%), citations per faculty (20%), graduate employability or recruiter review (10%), proportion of international faculty (5%), proportion of international students (5%), and teaching quality reflected in student/faculty ratio (20%). The amount of money that pours into a university is not considered a factor in the rankings (although, of course, the less non-tuition money, the more students per faculty).

Times, however, has revised the way it uses its criteria for this year’s rankings. The biggest change is the removal of Thomson ISI from the Times process. Instead, Times now uses Scopus, which according to Times, “has a less pronounced bias towards the US, resulting in a reduced advantage in their favor in this indicator, covers a larger number of papers and journals overall leading to greater representation from lesser known universities and institutions from academic systems with less emphasis on publication, and covers more sources in languages other than English resulting in better numbers for institutions with large volumes of high quality research in their own language.” This is a welcome development. I have time and again attacked the bias displayed by Thomson ISI in their listing, and I am really happy that Times has dropped Thomson ISI.

Another welcome change is the use of standard scores (z-scores), which are much more reliable than the type Times used last year. This change has removed the bias for universities that excel only in a few areas. The list now reflects overall excellence.

In future columns, I shall discuss why our universities are faring worse than those in Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand.

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR SPORTS: The citation for the Best Book on Sports for 2006 read this way: “For being a timely chronicle of the life and times of Manny Pacquiao, perhaps the best boxer of his generation, and stretching the boundaries of the sports column rope-a-dope style, to make it part memoir, part political commentary, and an overall entertaining read, the National Book Award goes to Pacific Storm: Pacquiao of the Philippines, by Recah Trinidad, Anvil Publishing and Inquirer Books.” (citation written by Juaniyo Arcellana)

“WORDS OF THE DAY” (English/Filipino) for next week’s elementary school classes:  Dec. 3 Monday: 1. join/wire, 2. noise/witch, 3. smoke/wood, 4. broken/work, 5. record/worm, 6. manager/worship; Dec. 4 Tuesday: 1. leaf/xenon, 2. farm/xi, 3. smooth/xerography, 4. sugar/xeric, 5. request/xanthophyll, 6. amuse/xanthic; Dec. 5 Wednesday: 1. line/xerox, 2. poor/xylem, 3. stick/xylocarp, 4. apple/xylograph, 5. scissors/xenogamy, 6. tendency/xanthoma; Dec. 6 Thursday: 1. left/xray, 2. silk/xylophone, 3. shock/xystus, 4. ever/xylonite, 5. parcel/xenophobia, 6. condition/xenograft; Dec. 7 Friday: 1. dear/yakap, 2. quick/yaman, 3. slope/yuko, 4. even/yasyas, 5. damage/yanig, 6. elastic/yagyag. The numbers after the dates indicate grade level. The dates refer to the official calendar for public elementary schools. For definitions of the words in Filipino, consult UP Diksiyonaryong Filipino.