a journal of a researcher

Monday, October 26, 2009

THE University Ranking and University Qualities

Times posted its 6rh edition the THE – QS World University Ranking recently and received wide responses. By the way, I got my Ph.D. from the No. 49 and am also an alumina from the No. 29. But this does mean too much. What I am interested is the criteria: Academic Peer Review (40%), Employer Review (10%), Faculty Student Ratio (20%), Citations per faculty (20%), International Faculty (5%) and International Students (5%). Only the first, the second and the fourth of the criteria make sense to me. I am working in an engineering faculty where we can easily get a lot of points on international faculty and students. I credit this to the subject and the immigration policy. This is just by nature. Every engineering faculty may be the same. I know that some of the names in the list are known only locally, not internationally. I do not know how these names are compared. I also know that there are also well known universities are not in the list. So who cares about this list?

Everyone is thinking the problem of what makes a good university. Different people have different criteria, because they are looking for different things. It may not be the research citation, and it may not be the international faculty. People who pay the tuition may think more the employer review or the start-up salary. People who do research may think more a specific domain. So a general ranking may not concern. For a university, I would say, to be generalized and try to be the top in the list won’t make sense for long. In the future, a university should be good in one dimension, not in multiple dimensions.

1 Comments:

  • i agree with you!

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 7:56 PM  

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