Attaining world class

In listing the world’s top universities, Times Higher Education Supplement (THES) uses the following criteria: peer review (40%), employer review (10%), staff per student (20%), citations per staff (20%), international staff (5%), and international students (5%).

Let us look at each of these criteria.

THES says: “The core of our methodology is the belief that expert opinion is a valid way to assess the standing of top universities. The opinions are gathered, like the rest of the rankings data, by our partners QS Quacquarelli Symonds (www.topuniversities.com), which has built up a database of e-mail addresses of active academics across the world. They are invited to tell QS what area of academic life they come from, choosing from science, biomedicine, technology, social science or the arts and humanities. They are then asked to list up to 30 universities that they regard as the leaders in the academic field they know about, and in 2007 we have strengthened our measures to prevent anyone voting for his or her own institution. This year we have the opinions of 5,101 experts, of whom 41 percent are in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, 30 percent in the Americas, and 29 percent in the Asia-Pacific region.”

Since peer review is really a popularity contest among academics, the results depend on who are doing the voting. If Philippine universities want to be included in the list, they must be proactive as far as academic opinion is concerned. We have numerous Ph.D. holders in our universities. We should have ourselves listed in the QS database. This is not difficult; all we have to do is to send our names online. We cannot vote for our own universities, but we can vote for other Philippine universities. If we vote for each other, our peer review scores will rise. I am not completely sure that this is ethical, but if we do not look out for each other, who will look out for us?

The next criterion – employer review – is something we do not have to worry about. Because of the large number of Filipino college graduates going abroad, numerous employers all over the world are aware of our universities. This does not mean that, ideologically speaking, we should be educating for overseas employment, but since the majority of our graduates apparently go abroad anyway, and since our economy depends on remittances, there is not much we can do to reverse the OFW phenomenon.

The third criterion – staff per student – is something we can do something about. Our universities, by and large, depend on student tuition for their income. That is why we pack students into classrooms, thus enlarging our class sizes and decreasing the ratio of staff (faculty) to students.

That is not the case with the top universities in the world. Other universities earn money outside of tuition. For example, like many top universities, Oxford and Stanford have malls inside their campuses. Like other top universities, Harvard earns from the patents of every invention produced by its faculty. This may sound like heresy for Filipino professors, but it is about time that our universities claim the intellectual rights to everything produced by professors during their time of employment. Since full-time professors are legally obliged to work for 40 hours a week, this means, in effect, that every invention or creation done by a professor is owned completely by her or his university. (Continued next week)

2006 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR DRAMA: The citation read: “For compiling five of the playwright’s prizewinning plays, whose characters form an identifiable Pinoy Everyman, whether in the streets of New York or a Davao newsroom, and for reminding us of the talent of Tommy Abuel (Editoryal), and foretelling the same of Eugene Domingo (Separasyon), the National Book Award goes to Mga Premyadong Dula by Lito Casaje (De La Salle University Press).” (citation written by Juaniyo Arcellana)

“WORDS OF THE DAY” (English//Filipino) for next week’s elementary school classes: Dec. 10 Monday: 1. bird//zag, 2. size//zarf, 3. snow//zacaton, 4. narrow//zaffre, 5. writing//zakat, 6. delicate//zabaglione; Dec. 11 Tuesday: 1. goat//zamia, 2. skin//zebra, 3. seem//zarzuela, 4. orange//zariba, 5. future//zap, 6. decision//zamarra; Dec. 12 Wednesday: 1. hand//zero, 2. skirt//zenith, 3. spoon//zephyr, 4. butter//zone, 5. carriage//zinc, 6. approval//ziggurat; Dec. 13 Thursday: 1. nose//zoo, 2. sleep//ziff, 3. test//zip, 4. kettle//zipper, 5. acid//zeta, 6. experience//zymurgy; Dec. 14 Friday: 1. neck//zigzag, 2. slip//zing, 3. than//zinnia, 4. boiling//zizz, 5. attempt//zit, 6. expansion//zinedelak. 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.