World’s Best Universities: Another Top 200

World’s Best Universities: Top 200 from US News and World Report

Slighly misleading this as is the same league table as previously published by THE.

What is a little more interesting is that, from next year, THE will be using a different compiler but QS will, it seems, be continuing to partner with US News. Therefore there are going to be three international league tables in 2010. Meantime, the top 25 is as follows:

1 Harvard University (1 in 2008)
2 University of Cambridge (3)
3 Yale University (2)
4 University College London (7)
5= Imperial College London (6)
5= University of Oxford (4)
7 University of Chicago (8)
8 Princeton University (12)
9 Massachusetts Institute of Technology (9)
10 California Institute of Technology (5)
11 Columbia University (10)
12 University of Pennsylvania (11)
13 Johns Hopkins University (13=)
14 Duke University (13=)
15 Cornell University (15)
16 Stanford University (17)
17 Australian National University (16)
18 McGill University (20)
19 University of Michigan (18)
20= Eth Zurich (24)
20= University of Edinburgh (23)
22 University of Tokyo (19)
23 King’s College London (22)
24 University of Hong Kong (26)
25 Kyoto University (25)

UK universities in 2009 THE world league table

Follow up to earlier post on the latest THE world league table.

There are 18 UK universities in the latest THE/QS world university league table with most improving their positions and Leeds being a new entry:

2 Cambridge
4 UCL
5= Oxford
5= Imperial
20= Edinburgh
23 King’s
26 Manchester
34 Bristol
58 Warwick
66 Birmingham
67= LSE
70 York
79 Glasgow
82 Sheffield
87= St Andrews
91 University of Nottingham
95= Southampton
99 Leeds

General take on this in THE and the Guardian is that the US is slipping, UK is holding its own (apart from Oxford) but Asian universities are catching up fast.

Latest 2009 world university league table rankings from THE

Latest 2009 world rankings from THE and QS

The University world rankings have been published in THE. The top 25 is as follows:

2009
1 Harvard University (1 in 2008)
2 University of Cambridge (3)
3 Yale University (2)
4 University College London (7)
5= Imperial College London (6)
5= University of Oxford (4)
7 University of Chicago (8)
8 Princeton University (12)
9 Massachusetts Institute of Technology (9)
10 California Institute of Technology (5)
11 Columbia University (10)
12 University of Pennsylvania (11)
13 Johns Hopkins University (13=)
14 Duke University (13=)
15 Cornell University (15)
16 Stanford University (17)
17 Australian National University (16)
18 McGill University (20)
19 University of Michigan (18)
20= Eth Zurich (24)
20= University of Edinburgh (23)
22 University of Tokyo (19)
23 King’s College London (22)
24 University of Hong Kong (26)
25 Kyoto University (25)

The full tables, including subject rankings, should be available here.

The key points noted about the top 100:

* A dramatic fall in the number of North American universities in the top 100, from 42 in 2008 to 36 in 2009, reflects the growing presence and impact of Asian and European institutions on the world higher education stage. Of these, McGill was the highest ranked Canadian University, up two places at 18th.
* There are 39 European universities in the top 100, up from 36 in 2008. ETH Zurich is the top ranked continental European university at 20th place.
* The number of Asian universities in the top 100 also increased – from 14 to 16 institutions. The University of Tokyo, at 22nd, is the highest ranked Asian university, ahead of the University of Hong Kong at 24th

‘Radical change’ is needed to reassure public on standards says THE

Follow up to earlier post on this topic.

According to Times Higher Education: “‘Radical change’ is needed to reassure public on standards”.

External examiners would be interviewed by inspection teams and universities would give a clear indication of the number of hours they expect students to study under plans to boost public confidence in the quality of higher education. A new “public-facing” role for the Quality Assurance Agency and an independent channel for external examiners to report concerns are also among the wide-ranging proposals published in a report to the Higher Education Funding Council for England on 1 October.

Hefce’s Teaching, Quality and the Student Experience sub-committee, chaired by Colin Riordan, vice-chancellor of the University of Essex, was set up to investigate concerns about standards raised last year. Its key message is that while there is “no systemic failure” in the sector, allegations of poor quality pose a serious risk to its reputation, and “radical change” is required in the way that information about quality and standards is communicated.

It is important to stress that the ‘radical change’ here relates to the communication of information, not to the wider issues about the assurance of standards and quality (and to note that the word ‘radical’ appears only once in the report, in the foreword). Articulating arrangements for the assurance of academic standards in a clear and accessible way is notoriously difficult – as the IUSS select committee discovered when talking to the VCs from Oxford and Oxford Brookes Universities.

Table of table of tables

Table of tables

A composite university league table derived from the four domestic league tables has been prepared by THE.

It is presented as a real labour-saving device:

With so many national newspaper league tables, it can be difficult to keep track of the results.

Certainly can, but luckily

a source has amalgamated the available data for Times Higher Education to produce the definitive table of tables. It combines rankings produced by The Independent, The Guardian, The Times and The Sunday Times.

The results are…

1 Oxford
2 Cambridge
3 Imperial
4 StAndrews
5 Warwick
6 UCL
7 LSE
8 Durham
9 York
10 Bath
11 Edinburgh
12= Exeter
12= Loughborough
14 Southampton
15 Bristol
16 King’s College
17= Lancaster
17= Leicester
19 Nottingham
20 Glasgow

So, no huge surprises there. Wisely though, THE “acknowledges the methodological limitations”. Bit of an understatement that.

“Pressure grows” to replace league tables

“League tables should be replaced, says v-c” according to a recent article in THE. As an alternative to league tables it is proposed that comprehensive “quality profiles” be used instead of crude rankings.

Chris Brink, vice-chancellor of Newcastle University, said assessments should ask if the university is “good at what it does”, rather than if it is “better than the others”:

The intention is to supersede the lists compiled by newspapers with a tool that allows more detailed comparison of institutions’ strengths and weaknesses and better reflects the sector’s diversity. Last autumn, the Higher Education Funding Council for England suggested that web-based “spidergrams” could be used to illustrate university performance across a range of areas. Times Higher Education understands the proposal was accepted by the former Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills, and appeared in the draft Higher Education Framework drawn up by John Denham as Universities Secretary.

Professor Brink said that “quality is a more subtle and multi-dimensional concept than can be captured in a linear ranking…If we could find a way of quality profiling that allows for all three core functions as well as sector diversity, we would be doing ourselves and the general public a favour. Quality profiling of this kind would give us a fresh way of dealing with the issue of comparability – particularly if profiles could be compiled on the basis of some sector-wide guidelines and categories.”

An analysis of newspaper rankings commissioned by Hefce last year raised a number of concerns, but acknowledged that institutions were strongly influenced by league tables. The “spidergram” approach, being considered by the Government, is based on performance indicators in research, knowledge transfer, teaching, workforce skills and widening participation.

This is an interesting contribution. Spidergrams or similar profiling mechanisms in the form described here can be helpful tools and can offer a useful snapshot of an institution’s position. This could be useful not only to prospective students and external stakeholders but also to the university itself. All good stuff then. But no matter how helpful, meaningful and accurate such profiles are, it seems extremely unlikely that they will supplant league tables. Whether we like it or not the rankings are here to stay – what these kind of mechanisms can do though is, possibly, influence the indicators used in some of the league tables and that might represent some positive progress. We shall see.

An alternative global ranking of universities?

European project launched to develop a new international league table

Global Higher Ed has a report on the decision by the European Commission to award a million euro tender to develop and test a global ranking of universities to a consortium of institutions:

The successful bid – the CHERPA network (or the Consortium for Higher Education and Research Performance Assessment), is charged with developing a ranking system to overcome what is regarded by the European Commission as the limitations of the Shanghai Jiao Tong and the QS-Times Higher Education schemes. The final product is to be launched in 2011.

CHERPA is comprised of a consortium of leading institutions in the field within Europe; all have been developing and offering rather different approaches to ranking over the past few years.

But will it fly as an alternative?

IREG, the International Observatory on Rankings, reports the details:

The European ranking system will be independent, “robust” and measure higher education’s core functions of research, teaching and outreach, says the tender’s terms of reference. It will cover all types of higher education institutions in and outside Europe – particularly in North America, Asia and Australia – and will enable comparisons and benchmarking of similar institutions at the institutional and field levels.

The basic approach underlying the project is to compare only institutions which are similar and comparable in terms of their missions and structures. Therefore the project is closely linked to the idea of a European classification (“mapping”) of higher education institutions developed by CHEPS. The feasibility study will include focused rankings on particular aspects of higher education at the institutional level (e.g., internationalization and regional engagement) on the one hand, and two field-based rankings for business and engineering programmes on the other hand.

The project will help institutions better position themselves and improve their development strategies, quality and performance. It will enable stakeholders, especially students, to make informed choices between institutions and programmes – which existing rankings do not do because they focus only on research and entire institutions.

The field-based rankings will each focus on a particular type of institution and will develop and test a set of indicators appropriate to these institutions. The rankings will be multi-dimensional and will – like the CHE ranking – use a grouping approach rather than simplistic league tables. In contrast to existing global rankings, the design will compare not only the research performance of institutions but will include teaching & learning as well as other aspects of university performance.

Will be interesting to see the outputs of this work but it will be a huge challenge for the new model to become a credible alternative to SJTU and THE world rankings.

Getting Freshers to read, discuss and engage

THE reports on a really rather creative initiative at St Andrews

Every new student enrolling at the University of St Andrews this autumn will be sent a novel during the summer and will be encouraged to discuss it with other freshers when they arrive on campus in September. The university is distributing Mohsin Hamid’s novel The Reluctant Fundamentalist, a Man Booker-shortlisted work, to all 1,500 new undergraduates in an initiative to give students a common discussion topic and to focus their energies on broad intellectual debate rather than narrow academic study.

This is a terrific idea. Helps with student induction and orientation in halls and ensures that the residential experience has a learning dimension too. Wish we’d thought of it

RAE Funding Results

RAE funding results out

Following the results published in December 2008.

Handy summaries of research funding outcomes are published by the Times Higher Education. Resources have been spread more thinly and there are some perhaps surprising recipients of significant growth in research income:

Biggest winners by cash increase (growth, % increase)
University of Nottingham, £9,685,797, up 23.6%
University of Oxford, £8,769,293, 8.0%
Queen Mary, £7,282,125, 29.4%
University of Liverpool, £6,420,263, up 19.5%
Loughborough University, £5,965,970, 36.9%
University of Bristol £5,607,884, up 12.6%
London School of Hygiene, £4,980,410, 46.5%
University of Plymouth, £4,868,489, 125.8%
Brunel University, £4,542,356, 54.5%
University of Kent, £3,779,827, 46.4%
Cranfield University, £3,621,707, 36.8%
University of Exeter, £3,550,318, 24.4%
City University London, £3,425,676, 50.3%
University of the West of England, £3,342,120, 121.6%
The Open University, £3,323,539, 44.9%

Good news for some of us but some institutions have lost out.

UK universities in the world top 100 rankings

Following up earlier post on the THE 2008 rankings, 17 UK universities make the top 100:

3 Cambridge
4 Oxford
6 Imperial
7 UCL
22 King’s
23 Edinburgh
29 Manchester
32 Bristol
66 LSE
69 Warwick
73 Glasgow
75 Birmingham
76 Sheffield
81= York
83= St Andrews
86 University of Nottingham
99= Southampton

Some fluctuations on 2007 but nothing too dramatic (arguably). The BBC’s reports on all this fun and entertainment is interesting for its matter of fact approach.