Ranking universities

There are several lists of the best universities around the world.

The most prestigious is that compiled by Shanghai Jiaotong University, which ranks only 1,200 universities, based on Nobel Prizes won by faculty, articles published in the journals Nature and Science, and entries in the Science Citation Index and Social Sciences Citation Index.

The second most prestigious is the Times Higher Education (THE) World University Rankings, which looks only at “the world’s top universities ranked exclusively on their reputation for teaching and research.” It bases its ranking on an opinion survey of 13,000 academics from 131 countries. Although completely subjective and not even statistically valid (the respondents are not randomly selected), THE is curiously considered objective.

The third most prestigious is High Impact Universities Research Performance Index, which bases its rankings of 1,000 universities on the g-index of Scopus (an objective measure of research output). Since our universities are not exactly strong in research, we do not figure in Shanghai, THE, or High Impact.

The best known, because it is very well marketed, is QS World University Rankings, compiled by Quacquarelli Symonds, a commercial group that prides itself on organizing “the largest business education events in the world.” Because its business consists of matching international students with international programs, it bases its rankings on academic peer review, employer review, citations per faculty, student faculty ratio, international faculty, and international students.

QS lists as the top 10 Philippine universities UP, Ateneo, UST, DLSU, San Carlos, MSU, Silliman, Saturnino Urios, Adamson, and Central Mindanao.

The ranking that monitors the most number of schools is Webometrics Ranking of World Universities. It bases its ranking of more than 19,000 schools on external inlinks, web page size, number of rich files, and citations in Google Scholar.

Webometrics lists as the top ten Philippine universities UP Diliman, DLSU, Ateneo, UPLB, UP System, UST, Xavier, UP Mindanao, UP Manila, and MSU-IIT.

Also based only on Web statistics is 4International Colleges & Universities, “an international higher education search engine and directory reviewing accredited universities and colleges in the world.” 4International monitors 10,000 colleges and universities in 200 countries, ranking them in terms of web popularity. It bases its ranking on three search engines: Google Page Rank, Yahoo Inbound Links, and Alexa Traffic Rank.

4International lists as the top ten Philippine universities the UP System, Ateneo, UPLB, Aquinas, DLSU, UP Diliman, MSU-IIT, UST, UE, and San Carlos.

Not prestigious but useful to students looking for universities is Top Study Links, which bases its rankings on size, visibility, research papers, and scholars.

Top Study lists as the top ten Philippine universities UP Diliman, DLSU, UPLB, ADMU, Xavier, UST, UP System, UP Manila, UP Mindanao, and MSU-IIT.

Like Webometrics and 4International, Top Study treats the UP System as a different school from the UP campuses, probably because the UP System has its own website. That should show you something about how credible these three are.

Less important are rankings done by newspapers, such as Newsweek (discontinued), Asiaweek (defunct), and U.S. News and World Report (ranking only American schools).

The least credible world rankings are the Russia-based Global University Ranking (which lists Moscow State University as better than Harvard and Cambridge) and the Paris-based Professional Ranking of World Universities (which lists five French universities among the top 20 in the world).

Why are world university rankings important? It’s not just bragging rights that are at stake here. Getting into these lists is crucial to the existence of our higher education institutions. The top universities in these lists attract the best scholars, teachers, and students around the world, as well as huge grants and funds from international organizations and foundations.

If we want to get big money for research and development, we have to invest money on getting into these lists. Of course, if we invest peanuts on faculty salaries, research equipment, and travel to international conferences, we get peanuts, too. We will rely completely on tuition income, which — like OFW remittances — can just disappear without warning.

TEACHING TIP OF THE WEEK. From Berkeley comes this simple advice: Make students commit mistakes.

Instead of only ensuring that students pass, good teachers provide opportunities for students to fail. That sounds counter-intuitive, but research shows that good teachers help students to learn from mistakes.

Here are two anecdotes from the Berkeley site (teaching.berkeley.edu):

“Several excellent teachers stress the importance of giving students an opportunity to practice (and even to fail) in a nonpunitive environment. A biochemistry professor, for example, points out that the data in student laboratory reports can easily be faked; therefore his main concern is that students understand why their experimental results failed and not that they get the right results. ‘If students can analyze and explain why their results failed,’ he says, ‘I give them full credit for their lab reports. I emphasize that everyone makes mistakes; what is important is to learn how to profit from them.’

“A professor of English says, ‘I try to set a tone in which students can readily admit that something went wrong in their bibliographic search. Because the course focuses on mastering a methodology and a range of bibliographic skills, I encourage them to share their mistakes and explore the reasons for them with the group rather than masking those mistakes in favor of a finished, but mediocre, research product.’”