Shanghai Jiao Tong World Ranking 2009

2009 Shanghai Jiao Tong University League Table just published….

The latest SJTU rankings for 2009 have now been published.

Harvard is again top as in 2007 and 2008, and Cambridge remains in 4th position and top from the UK. Top 20 as follows:

1 Harvard University
2 Stanford University
3 University of California – Berkeley
4 University of Cambridge
5 Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
6 California Institute of Technology
7 Columbia University
8 Princeton University
9 University of Chicago
10 University of Oxford
11 Yale University
12 Cornell University
13 University of California – Los Angeles
14 University of California – San Diego
15 University of Pennsylvania
16 University of Washington – Seattle
17 Univ Wisconsin – Madison
18 University of California – San Francisco
19 Johns Hopkins University
20  Tokyo University

Note that the Top 18 are identical to 2008.

UK universities appear in the top 100 as follows (change from last year in brackets):

4 Cambridge (no change)
10 Oxford (no change)
21 UCL (up 1)
26 Imperial (down 1)
41 Manchester (down 1)
53 Edinburgh (up 2)
61 Bristol (no change)
65 King’s London (up 16)
81 Sheffield (down 4)
83 Nottingham (down 1)
94= Birmingham (down 3)

No other UK institutions feature in the Shanghai Jiao Tong world 100.

Higher education as food labelling

Food labelling for university courses

From the BBC website:

School leavers applying to English universities will get more data about courses under government plans to treat them more like consumers. A food labelling-style system will flag up teaching hours, career prospects and seminar frequency, says the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills.

On Tuesday, it will announce a new framework for higher education. The plan aims to set out priorities for universities ahead of a review of the way students fund their education. Tuition fees were introduced in 1998 and Business Secretary Lord Mandelson believes this entitles students to act more like consumers.

He has said government and industry must scrutinise and monitor courses on behalf of students, encouraging “a greater degree of competition between institutions” to drive improvement in courses. His department already publishes statistics on employability after six months and three-and-a-half years, but the latest plans would put information in one place. This could include graduates’ typical future earnings, contact hours with tutors, assessment methods and frequency of tests.

So instead of detailed descriptions of each course in prospectuses, via ucas, on university websites and the detail of league table subject comparisons, we are going to have something like this:

It really isn’t at all clear how this is going to be in any way an improvement or of real value to prospective students. Consolidating small pieces of information into one place in this way suggests that a much more superficial assessment of quality is the aim here. And how is it going to be decided what is red and what is green?

Let’s hope that the real proposals are a bit better than this implies.

Robert Southey on university life

Letters of Robert Southey

Interesting news item about the publication of the letters of Robert Southey, one time poet laureate.

Letter 60 includes a couple of interesting observations on higher education:

I know nothing so unpleasant as leaving the friends we love & — yet such is the state of society that life is hardly any thing than continual parting. you are an exception — but observe the general tenour of life — school & college occupy what ought to be <the> happiest ages — then comes business & perhaps the opportunity of happiness when the relish is gone. Universities might certainly be made useful institutions but at present they are pernicious to individuals & to the nation at large. the morality of Oxford you know how to estimate but with respect to the polishing which I know I want but fear I shall never attain — is it to be found there? steel receives its last polish from a womans hand I believe — & my rugged ore requires the same management — this I shall never meet with. three years must be spent in studies which lead to nothing — & the remainder of my life in forming theories of happiness which I never can practises. Edmund Seward says very truly that a man who indulges himself in literature merely for self amusement deserves no more respect from the public than the glutton or the voluptuary. this is very true but selfishness is deeply implanted in the human heart so deeply that even the strong hand of Philosophy cannot root it up. you & I may indulge ourselves in theories of reforming the taste & morals of a corrupt age & perhaps our theories are not wholly visionary — but is our disinterestedness such as might prompt us to this against our inclination?

And further critique:

To me the radical defect of the universities appears this — the association of men with only men. the total absence of that sex from whom only we can receive the last polish. the intercourse in this country is much too distant & of course Man becomes more brutal when the tablecloth is removed the women retire with the dishes they have dressed…

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

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.

Dog Earns MBA Online

Dog Earns M.B.A. Online – from The Chronicle of Higher Education

Just goes to show:

GetEducated.com, an online-learning consumer group, managed to purchase an online M.B.A. for its mascot, a dog named Chester Ludlow. The Vermont pug earned his tassles by pawing over $499 to Rochville University, which offers “distance learning degrees based on life and career experience,” according to a news release from GetEducated. He got back a package from a post-office box in Dubai that contained a diploma and transcripts, plus a certificate of distinction in finance and another purporting to show membership in the student council.

Cue a whole series of dreadful puns about hounding the diploma mills and a promo video about the stunt: “Dog Earns Online MBA: A Cautionary Tail.”

Futurity.org: promoting university research

Futurity.org

Futurity.org has just launched (September 2009) – it is a consortium led by Duke University, Stanford University, and the University of Rochester and aims to highlight the latest discoveries from leading universities in the United States and Canada:

Futurity aggregates the very best research news. The site, which is hosted at the University of Rochester, covers news in the environment, health, science, society, and other areas.

Why Futurity? Why now?
The way people share information is changing quickly and daily. Blogs and social media sites like YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook are just a taste of what’s to come. It will be easier than ever to share content instantly with people around the globe, allowing universities to reach new audiences and engage a new generation in discovery.

Equally significant has been the recent decline in science and research coverage by traditional news outlets. For decades, universities have partnered with journalists to communicate their work to the public, but that relationship is evolving. At the same time, research universities are among the most credible and trusted institutions in society, and now have the ability to deliver their news and information directly to readers without barriers or gatekeepers.

In an increasingly complex world, the public needs access to clear, reliable research news. Futurity does the work of gathering that news. Think of it as a snapshot of where the world is today and where it’s headed tomorrow. Discover the future.

Ambitious stuff. It’s still early days for this site but it does look extremely promising. And is there anything similar in the UK? Research TV, now no more, had a similar kind of aspiration.

“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.

University of Nottingham: Graduate Trainee Programme

The first group of four Graduate Trainees are coming to the end of their year-long programme which has been extremely successful.

As the advert for the 2009-10 scheme describes it:

The University is delighted to announce the Nottingham Graduate Trainee Programme. This innovative programme, aimed exclusively at University of Nottingham graduates from any of the University campuses interested in developing a career in university administration. It offers an invaluable insight into this dynamic management activity whilst developing an understanding of:

* markets
* income streams
* resource allocation processes
* client bases including students, parents, employers, funding bodies and commercial partners.

The programme offers four trainees the opportunity to experience key components of university operation and build an understanding of the institution’s strategy. Trainees will spend 12 months undertaking a planned rotation of placements in different areas of the University, reporting to senior staff. Placements will be across central services and schools, and trainees may have the opportunity to experience activity at one of the University’s overseas campuses in Malaysia or China.

The evidence from the presentations by each of the trainees on their experiences and the results both for them and the University is extraordinarily positive. They have all done outstandingly well and all four have now secured other posts within Nottingham which really is excellent news.

Comments on some of the outcomes of the programme can be seen in a recent podcast:

On ‘The Edgeless University’

The Edgeless University – Demos

Available for download: via Demos Publications

This is an interesting paper which identifies a range of significant technological challenges for higher education. It is suggested that universities are on the brink of an electronic revolution like the music industry in 1999 but struggling to make sense of the opportunities or understand the strategic options:

The next stage of technological investment must be more strategic. The sector currently lacks a coherent narrative of how institutions will look in the future and the role of technology in the transition to a wider learning and research culture.

A reasonable enough proposition although this in the context of welcoming the far-sighted establishment of JANET seems a little bit harsh – it is difficult to get much more strategic than setting up a successful shared sector wide network like this.

Many of the specific points made in the report are quite pertinent (if not entirely novel):

- openness in terms of publication of research and free access to IP remains a difficult agenda;

- the importance of recognising the value of teaching in the context of potentially distorting RAE/REF demands is a challenge;

- high quality e-learning, discrete or blended, is about much more than just providing new tools – it requires huge investment and support;

- the value of face-to-face learning and teaching should not be discounted.

Fairly straightforward agenda there then.

However, some of the ideas in here are just plain wrong. In particular the idea that there is a deficit of flexible study pathways for credit-based learning and that somehow it is the role of government to take a specific policy lead in this area:

Government policy must help higher education institutions develop new ways of offering education seekers affiliation and accreditation. This might include shorter pick-and-mix courses and new forms of assessment.

Then there is the particularly misguided idea of seeking to reconcile “informal learning” with the formal system of higher education:

Informal learning is growing in popularity and significance, and attracting the attention of politicians, but there are problems in reconciling informal learning with formal frameworks, and managing the relationship between institutions of higher education and the kinds of learning that happen outside them. We have yet to find a model for collating learning from many different sources. Funding and the structure of learning in formal higher education tend to militate against this.

There is a good reason for this – if “informal learning” can be recognised then there are actually costs in doing so and, in order to have currency, it has to be within an educational framework of some kind. More often than not though, such learning will be just “informal” – it is difficult to argue that mainstream HE provision should be skewed to cope with such marginal activity. Indeed, there remains significant adult and continuing education provision parts of which are structured for this purpose.

The overall conclusion though is pretty difficult to argue with:

In building the e-infrastructure for higher education we should not just build around the needs of institutions as they exist already. To pursue the possibilities of the ‘Edgeless University’, technology will have to be taken more seriously as a strategic asset. Technology is a driver for change. But we should harness it as a solution, a tool, for the way we want universities to support learning and research in the future.

So, the future is ‘edgeless’ it seems.