What kinds of rankings exist
The Institute of Higher Education of China's Jiao Tong University has published its ranking since 2003. Initially, researchers were only interested in comparing the level of Chinese higher education institutions with leading world universities, but the results attracted great interest from the entire scientific community. Universities closely follow the Jiao Tong ranking and never miss an opportunity to boast about a high place. For example, this year the Israeli Technion, which outperformed most European universities in the technology category, immediately issued a press release stating that “the Jiao Tong ranking is considered comprehensive and reliable.”
The THES/QS ranking, a joint project of THES (The Times Higher Education Supplement, the higher education supplement to the Times) and QS (Quacquarelli Symonds, a company dealing with international education issues), has existed since 2004. THES aims to assess the academic level of a university, focusing on the quality of research and teaching, as well as the international significance of the institution. The THES 2007 ranking has not yet been published.
“Webometrics,” a project of the Cybermetrics Lab, has also been active since 2004. The ranking is based solely on web data: the university's web activity, number of electronic publications, and number of mentions. Of all rankings, Webometrics is the least “elitist”: the group aims not only to identify the traditional top hundred but also to rank as many universities as possible, ideally all. Indeed, Webometrics publishes an ordered list of 4,000 (!) universities from almost all countries of the world (for comparison: Jiao Tong ranks 500, THES ranks 200).
In addition to these three main rankings, there are, of course, many national ones. Especially many in the United States, where higher education and everything related to it is always in fashion. We recently wrote about the British national ranking, in which Oxford lost to Cambridge for the first time in seven years. Leiden University compiles an interesting ranking of European universities.
What they say
In the Jiao Tong 2007 ranking, published in mid-August, Harvard University takes first place, Stanford second, the University of California, Berkeley third, British Cambridge fourth (and Oxford, note, only tenth), and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) fifth.
As many as 53 universities out of the top hundred are American. The United Kingdom takes second place (11 universities), and Germany and Japan share third (6 universities each). Also included in the top hundred are universities from Canada, France, Sweden (4 each), Switzerland (3), Australia, the Netherlands (2 each), Denmark, Israel, Norway, Russia, and Finland (1 each).
This year, Jiao Tong published not only an overall ranking but also five separate rankings in different scientific fields: natural sciences and mathematics, technology and computer science, life sciences and agriculture, medicine and pharmacy, and social sciences. Each section highlights the top 100 universities.
The first five places in the Webometrics ranking are occupied respectively by Stanford, MIT, the University of California, Berkeley, Harvard, and the University of Pennsylvania. The distribution of countries whose universities are in the top hundred does not differ much from the Jiao Tong data, but Israel is absent, while Mexico and Taiwan are present. Webometrics also publishes rankings for each individual country.
The THES 2007 ranking has not yet been published, but note that in 2006, out of the world's top 200 universities, Harvard took first place, Cambridge second, Oxford third, and MIT and Yale shared fourth.
How they are calculated
In any ranking, each university receives some numerical characteristic, a score. Typically, after ranking, the score of the first place is set to 100 for clarity, and the rest are proportionally recalculated. Each expert group has its own formulas for calculating the score.
In Jiao Tong, the score is composed of the following indicators: quality of education (weight in overall score – 10%), staff professionalism (40%), research level (40%), and size (10%). Quality of education is determined by the number of alumni who have won a Nobel Prize or Fields Medal (roughly equivalent to the Nobel Prize in mathematics). Teacher professionalism consists of the number of staff who have won Nobel or Fields prizes (20%) and the number of staff with a high citation index. Research level is determined by the number of articles published in Nature and Science (20%) and the number of articles mentioned in a special list from the Institute for Scientific Information: the international citation index (20%). Size is the quotient of the sum of the weighted previous five scores divided by the number of staff.
In reality, the calculations are more complex: various additional coefficients are used. For example, if an article is published by a team of several authors, the contribution of each author is taken into account. For universities specializing in the social sciences and humanities, journals other than Nature and Science are used. There are also “adjustment” coefficients for other indicators.
The THES score is half based on the opinions of specialists. Experts survey those who have an understanding of the level of universities: members of the academic community worldwide (weight of their opinion – 40%) and employers (10%). Last year, nearly 4,000 scientists and 800 employers were surveyed. The other half consists of the level of students and staff (publications, citation index), the number of foreign students and staff, and the ratio of teachers to students. As in Jiao Tong, many adjustment coefficients are applied.
Webometrics uses only web data: web size (number of pages found by search engines, weight 25%), visibility (number of external links to the site, weight 50%), number of downloaded files (12.5%), and the number of publications and citation index on Google Scholar (12.5%). Again, there are correction factors.
How much can you trust them
Universities that traditionally hold high places welcome the idea of rankings and support them in every way. All others, of course, are also extremely curious to see who is better and stronger. However, the compilers of the rankings themselves honestly warn that the task they set for themselves is practically unsolvable.
Evaluating universities from different countries using the same criteria will obviously not be absolutely objective. Thus, the analyzed rankings are heavily oriented toward Western standards, so domestic universities, which, although no longer separated by the Iron Curtain, still live by somewhat different traditions, are at a disadvantage.
Each ranking has its shortcomings. Jiaotong gives little consideration to the contribution of social sciences and humanities; Webometrics sees only the information available online; THES relies on the opinions of specific surveyed individuals (the number of these people is impressive, but there are even more universities in the world). The citation index is also known for its controversy and bias.
Rankings are in demand, which means they will continue to appear. Undoubtedly, they are useful, helping to understand many patterns of modern education and the structure of the scientific community, and also, in general, strengthening international cooperation. However, it is not recommended to consider them the ultimate truth.
Alexander Berdichevsky.
Lenta.ru