World Class Universities

Robert Birnbaum, professor of higher education at the University of Maryland and author of some very interesting books on higher education (How Colleges Work; Management Fads in Higher Education) has written an interesting (and amusing) article in International Higher Education (the Quarterly of the Center for International Higher Education (CIHE) in Boston College).

Birnbaum is worried about the World Class University ranking crisis. Universities around the world are either proclaiming that they have attained or try to achieve this mythical status. But actually, we have no clue what it means. Philip Altbach, leader of CIHE, has written before on the cost and benefits of the race towards world class:

Everyone wants a world-class university. No country feels it can do without one. The problem is that no one knows what a world-class university is, and no one has figured out how to get one. Everyone, however, refers to the concept. We are in an age of academic hype in which universities of different kinds in diverse countries claim this exalted status-often with little justification.

Birnbaum gives some suggestion on some alternative ways to identify world class universities:

1. The Bentham System - this scheme, based on the 19th century English philosopher Jeremy Bentham's principle of Utilitarianism, proposes that the best universities are those that bring the greatest happiness to the greatest number.
2. Olympic System - In the Olympic System, teams of university faculty would compete every four years in head to head competitions combining athletic and intellectual prowess to determine their world rankings
3. Borges System - our scholarly task is merely to identify the book of true ratings from among the infinite number of books that contain very similar, but false, ratings which also exist
4. Sausage System - Throw U.S. News, the Gourman Report, the Times Hiigher Education Supplement, and other rankings created by systems of all kinds into the same bowl, add and average out the results and voila! Just as we do not know how a sausage is made (or, more to the point, we don't want to know) the Sausage System makes it difficult to understand just what has gone into any particular set of ratings.
5. Lake Wobegon System - in Lake Wobegon, you will remember, all the children are above average. This suggests the possibility of significantly expanding the number of institutions that can be ranked as world class merely by increasing the number of institutions in each category.

But he continues on a more serious note. Building on a metaphor by Daniel Dennett, he argues that such World Class Universities can only be built if they are firmly grounded in strong and indigenous educational and social foundations Trying to develop them by using imported rhetoric, imported models and large sums of money is destined to fail:

"Attempting to build World-Class Universities without attending first to the educational and social ground on which such institutions might stand is, as Ivan Illich once said, is "like trying to do urban renewal in New York City from the twelfth story up." Rather than more World Class Universities, what we really need in countries everywhere are more world-class technical institutes, world-class community colleges, world class colleges of agriculture, world class teachers colleges, and world class regional state universities."

A similar conclusion was drawn by Altbach. He concluded that as universities around the world seem to be orienting themselves to this single academic ideal, institutions and nations need to assess carefully their needs, resources, and long-term interests before launching into a campaign to build world-class institutions:

"Universities operate in both national and global contexts. The world-class idea falls into the global sphere. It assumes that the university is competing with the best academic institutions in the world and is aspiring to the pinnacle of excellence and recognition. National and even regional realities may differ. They relate to the need of the immediate society and economy and imply responsiveness to local communities. In these contexts, the nature of academic performance and roles may differ from what is expected at institutions competing in the global realm. To label one sphere world class while relegating the others to the nether regions of the academic hierarchy is perhaps inevitable, but nonetheless unfortunate."

I wholeheartedly agree with both conclusions. Universities are one of the oldest institutions and are clearly embedded in a nations' cultural, political and social context. This is not just the case for the Oxbridge-like universities, but also for the more recently established universities. However, this should not be a reason to avoid learning from each others experiences or models. Even copying models from other parts of the world does not necessarily lead to failure. It's just a matter of adaptation. And it is this process of local adaptation that is made difficult by the pressures on universities to adhere to so-called global world class standards.

Blame it on the rankings

Serious critique on rankings and league tables. This time not about the flawed methodologies and inaccuracies in the data collection, but on the detrimental effects of rankings. They 'erode academic vigour' and they 'threaten the country's prosperity'.

In the Guardian, Geoffrey Alderman argues that the league tables lead to grade inflation and a lowering of standards in order for universities to appear high in the rankings:

"How has British higher education got itself into this mess? Part of the answer lies in the league-table culture that now permeates the sector. The more firsts and upper seconds a university awards, the higher its ranking is likely to be. So each university looks closely at the grading criteria used by its league-table near rivals, and if they are found to be using more lenient grading schemes, the argument is put about that "peer" institutions must do the same. The upholding of academic standards is thus replaced by a grotesque "bidding" game, in which standards are inevitably sacrificed on the alter of public image - as reflected in newspaper rankings."

Alderman however, does not blame it all on rankings and league tables. It's also the changing student body that is to be blamed. Or more in particular, the funding system that has changed the student body:

"As UK students come to pay a greater proportion of the real cost of their tuition, they view themselves less as clients in the learning process and more as customers with needs to be satisfied. They are less interested in the acquisition of knowledge and of the critical skills needed to evaluate it, and more interested merely in acquiring and regurgitating those segments of knowledge necessary to obtain a degree."

I think Alderman is a bit too swift in his conclusions and his causal relations. Instead of the race-to-the-bottom thesis you could also argue that league tables lead to a race-to-the-top. That of course does require the rankings to use valid criteria and methods. His argument about the student body doesn't hold in my opinion. At least the relation isn't as straightforward as Alderman portrays. The 'students as customers' perspective can have a very positive effect on higher education. Since they payed, they want value for their money. They want scheduled classes to proceed, books to be available, lecturers to be prepared and to be involved, facilities to be up to date, etc. Alderman however doesn't seem to regard the student body very highly. They are reduced to degree seeking individuals.

The second critique comes from Richard Pike, Chief Executive of the Royal Society of Chemistry. He blames the lack of maths skills on the rankings and league tables:

"In the race to achieve higher rankings in the tables staff are discouraging pupils from taking mathematics after the age of 16 because the subject is viewed as difficult, and therefore a risk to league positions through examination failures."

To underline their argument they compared a (1st year students) maths test of "a respected English university" with a Chinese pre-entry test:

Ouch... I don't think you can blame this all on the rankings, but that hurts...

(thanks to ScienceGuide and Rangkingwatch for pointing me to the articles)

Higher Education and Statistics

The OECD has issued its latest Factbook. The OECD factbook 2007 contains a large amount of indicators on issues ranging from economics to the environment and from population to health. And of course on higher education. Some time ago I've been critical about the presentation of some of the OECD higher education statistics, but I must admit that they do a great job in collecting them. The OECD is without doubt the best source for cross-national statistics in the fields of higher education and science & innovation.

But of course you can do a lot with statistics and the media knows that. Just check out this article in the Higher Education section of the Australian:

"Australia's spending on tertiary education per student went backwards in the eight years after the Coalition came to power, leaving the nation ranked alongside Portugal, Poland and the Slovak Republic."

That sounds pretty bad... This definitely leaves the impression that funding per student levels in Australia are now behind Portugal, Poland and the Slovak Republic. I checked and... they are just behind the Netherlands, Norway and Denmark, clearly above the OECD average and ranking 8th in the OECD member countries. And in the mean time, it has one of the highest attainment rates for young people in the OECD (see graph; click to enlarge). Obviously this journalist only looked at the graphs that were presented on the OECD website and didn't check any further.


But didn't it decline then? Yes it did, and yes the commonwealth government should channel more resources to universities if it expects them to be Backing Australia's Future. I've said before that I'm not exactly convinced that the current government is doing a good job in the field of higher education, but still I prefer to stay with the facts.

But what exactly the facts are is also not always clear. Some time ago, the news programme 'the 7.30 Report' featured a debate between Minister Julie Bishop and Labor education spokesman Stephen Smit. I think that they spend half the time talking about the OECD statistics and how bad Australia scores in them:

JULIE BISHOP: Between 1995 and 2007 Federal government funding for higher education has increased by 26%. Now, Stephen keeps trotting out an OECD figure that he knows is flawed, he knows is misrepresenting the situation. There has not been a decline, there's been an increase.

STEPHEN SMITH: Well, the OECD Education at a Glance Report 2006 said that Australia's investment in tertiary education publicly had gone backwards by 7% whereas OECD average was an increase of 48%. Comparison with OECD countries, our investment in tertiary education, we're 18th.

JULIE BISHOP: I must take issue with the suggestion that our funding has decreased. Stephen knows that figure is dodgy and he keeps trotting it out. Every time he says it doesn't make it true. We haven't decreased funding by 7%. The figure he refers to leaves out taxpayer subsidies for HECS, it leaves out the massive injection of funding from 2004 - because the figures back in 2003 he is using, 2004, we, through Backing Australia's Future, have ensured that universities are $11 billion better off over the next decade. This year they are receiving $8.2 billion from the Federal Government. Our universities are in better financial shape than they've ever been in...

Now... who's right and who's wrong?

QS and Flawed Rankings

It's a fact! Rankings are getting more and more important. In a recent article in Inside Higher-ed I found out that they are even explicitly included in the performance criteria for some university presidents. In this case it was the Arizona State University president who would get an extra 60,000 US$ bonus if his university would improve its ranking in the U.S. News & World Report. But in the US, resistance against this ranking is gradually growing.

For the rest of the world it is probably the ranking of the Times Higher Education Supplement (THES) that has the biggest impact. I am sure that this ranking functions as a performance criterion for many university leaders in the world (although, much more implicitly). All the more reasons to be careful and accurate in composing the rankings. That's what you would think...

This week's Economist reports on an MBA ranking published by Fortune magazine. The top exists of the usual suspects like Wharton and Harvard. But one well respected business school was missing in the list: the Kenan-Flagler Business School of the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. The school for instance had recently placed eighth in a national ranking based on recruiter ratings published by the Wall Street Journal. So....what was the case?

It turned out that Fortune had used a European firm, Quacquarelli Symonds Ltd (QS), to collect data from the schools and create the list. When officials from Kenan-Flagler spoke with QS they were told that their school had been confused with North Carolina State’s College of Management. NC State rarely appears in any of the major rankings, but it placed 25th on Fortune’s list. Along with Kenan-Flagler, Boston University School of Management was also a victim of the flawed research.

After reading the first line, I thought: 'again!?' Yep... Quacquarelli Symonds Ltd (QS) did it again.

QS is the (UK based) organisation responsible for the THES rankings and they are making a real mess out of it. First time I noticed that was when the University of Malaya (UM) fell in the rankings from position 89 in 2004 to 169 in 2005. This caused quite some political turmoil in Malaysia. The result of the ranking was even discussed in Parliament. Even Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi expressed his concerns. The Vice Chancellor at the time of the 'rise and fall' of UM did not continue for a next term as VC.....

What proved to be the case was that QS had counted all the Malaysian Chinese and Malaysian Indians as foreign students (one of the criteria in their rankings) in 2004. In 2005, they corrected their mistake with a steep drop in the rankings as a result. During last years publication of the THES ranking I was in Kuala Lumpur (at UM) and I could experience the impact of the THES rankings myself. I've never seen so many articles and letters about higher education in regular newspapers.

But...this was just the tip of the iceberg. It's a good thing that there are people like Richard Holmes that are keeping a close watch on the methodology used in those rankings. He reports on many, many instances where QS messed up. Here are a few examples:

• On the flaws of peer review, and especially incorporating peer review as such an important criterion (40%), have a look here (on the geographical bias) , here (comparing the peer review with citations) and here (about the methodology of the peer review: a response rate of 0.8%!!!).
• On the student/faculty ratio. All indicators are indexed on the best performer on a that indicator. For faculty/student ratio in 2005 this was Duke University. It was clear that this figure was wrong (not Duke's mistake but QS's). However, it was not corrected for the 2006 rankings. Here he finds out what mistakes were made. Since the rest was indexed on this score, the other scores are wrong as well!
• There were also other universities were things went wrong, for instance here and here.
• And then there are simply a lot of factual mistakes reported here. No...that's not all. There are many more.

Holmes informed THES in an open letter about all of the QS mistakes, but they are not exactly in a hurry to correct these misstakes.

But also from the research community there's criticism. For instance this article in The Australian from Simon Marginson, a higher education researcher at the Center for the Study of Higher Education of the University of Melbourne. He also agrees that rankings are here to stay, but he does provide some valuable input for improving these rankings.

It's rather disappointing that reputable publications like THES and Forbes use the services of companies like QS. QS clearly doesn't have any clue about the global academic market and has no understanding of the impact that their rankings are having throughout the world. There has been a lot of critique about the indicators that they use, but at least we can see these indicators. It are the mistakes and the biases that are behind the indicators that make it unacceptable!

Fortune already took the results of the MBA ranking of their website. I wonder whether THES will do the same thing... Probably not.

Ivy League CEOs

The blog of the Center for College Affordability and Productivity (CCAP) has a post that plugs into an earlier article from Time: "Where the Fortune 50 CEOs Went to College". Here it was concluded that an elite career doesn’t always stem from an elite education.

CCAP conducted a deeper study of this topic. They tracked down the CEOs for the top 100 Fortune companies for the years 2006, 1980 and 1955. Together, this represents roughly three different generations of business leaders. From there, they researched where these CEOs completed their undergraduate and graduate work, in addition to levels and types of degrees obtained. They arrive at a similar conclusion:

"Over time, the Ivy League has experienced a decline. By 1980, the number of CEOs attending undergraduate school at Ivy League institutions had fallen to 19, a 50 percent drop from the previous generation. Fewer CEOs attended the prestigious schools as well, with only 32 in 1980. This trend away from the Ivy League as well as America’s “prestigious” universities continued into 2006. Of the top 100 Fortune CEOs of companies last year, only 12 did their undergraduate work at an Ivy institution and 20 at a prestigious school.

However, they also looked at the increasing number of CEOs that attended graduate schools after their undergraduate education. But even in graduate education, the Ivy League's dominance seems to be in decline:

"Graduate school attendance among the Fortune 100 CEOs has greatly increased over the past half century. For example, in 1955, only 17 CEOs attended graduate school. This number increased to 46 in 1980 and 61 in 2006. The number that attended Ivy graduate schools grew from 4 in 1955 to 16 in 1980 where it remained in 2006. This statistic remaining the same in the period from 1980 to 2006, despite increasing graduate school attendance, seems to further suggest the declining influence of the Ivy League—even among graduate schools."

Have a look at the complete post here.

The Ivy League Liga: Round 2

2006 has been somewhat of a revolutionary year for German higher education. The system where all universities were considered of equal quality and therefore were subjected to equal treatment by the government, experienced quite a stir.

German Minister of Research and Education Annette Schavan announced in October last year that the Ludwig-Maximilian University (Munchen) and the Technical University of Munchen and the University of Karlsruhe became Germany's first 'elite universities'. The three institutions are the biggest winners in Germany's 'excellence initiative'. This was established to improve the country's chronically under-funded universities (and its decreasing reputation abroad), by encouraging high level research and competition. The three universities will receive around 120 million euros each in federal and state funds over the next five years.

This week, the finalists for the second round were announced. Being one of the winners is crucial considering that getting designated 'elite' will mean enjoying a piece of the 1.9 billion euros pie, made available from 2007 to 2011. This time the result seems less skewed towards technology, and less towards the southern part of Germany than the first round. The finalists include two institutes of higher education in Berlin, the Free University and the Humboldt University. The others are the RWTH Aachen and the universities of Bochum, Freiburg, Gottingen, Heidelberg and Constance.

The final decision on which of these eight will be designated 'elite' will be made in October.

Some interesting views from the German academic community on the excellence initiative can be heard in this radio interview (from NPR; 4:26 in english):

Listen to the interview in Realplayer

Listen to the interview in Windows Media Player

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Prestigious Universities & Quality Education

Harvard, Princeton, London School of Economics. Prestigious universities with reputable academics and therefore a popular destination for students seeking high quality education. These universities score high on most rankings both internationally (THES rankings or the Shanghai Jiao Tong World Universities Ranking) and domestic (US News & World Report in the US and the Good Universities Guide in the UK). But... does that mean that students will get their high quality education?

The cover of Time (USA) and an op-ed piece for the Times Higher Education Supplement (UK) by Erik Ringmar seem to question this. Time observes that more and more students choose to attend small private colleges, even if they are admitted into the Ivy League institutions: competition for the Ivies is as fierce as ever, but kids who look beyond the famous schools may be the smartest applicants of all. Closer interaction with teachers is an important factor in this choice.

Walter Kirn, alumnus of Princeton, writes about the Ivy League X factor:

Although Princeton had far more money and mystique, its reading lists were composed of the same books, and its students were filled with the same questions. But the students carried those books with more aplomb, and they asked their questions with more confidence. That was the Ivy League's X factor. It bred confidence...

The case of Ringmar and LSE has been discussed frequently on blogs and in the mainstream media. At an LSE Open Day speech Ringmar - a senior lecturer at LSE at that time - told the future students that the real teaching was done by PhD students and that the in-class student experience was no better than they would get at the far less prestigious London Metropolitan University - in fact they might see more of the academic staff there (his Open Day speech can be found here).

In the op-ed piece, Ringmar repeats his point that it's not so much the learning experience that is valuable for students but that it's a matter of being certified:

During their first year at an elite institution like the LSE, students spend much of their time asking themselves what all the fuss is about. Obviously they know about the reputation of the School, the famous professors, the important books, the talking-LSE-heads that constantly pop up on the telly. But, the students ask, if the LSE is so great, why are many of the lecturers so boring, many exercises so useless, and why do the academics never seem to have any time for us?

An LSE diploma is not a proof of what they have learned as much as of their ability to come out on top in a neck-to-neck competition with their peers. A London Met diploma just doesn't do the same job.

Kirn seems to support this:

Even though we learned nothing at Princeton that we couldn't have learned elsewhere, the place gave us a calling card whose impact and power were undeniable. I assume it has opened doors for me, but none of the gatekeepers have said as much.

Ringmar and Kirn are both right to some extent. The additional value of a Princeton or LSE degree over a 'regular' degree is not (only) in the quality of education but also in the way these degrees open doors in the future.

However, the selection of students will also affect the quality of education, assuming that quality is determined by more than just the student-teacher interaction. The interaction between the students themselves, inside as well as outside classes, contributes at least as much. And considering the effort students need to do to get in, this interaction might be a bit more challenging in those institutions.

Multidimensional Carnegie Classification

Today, the The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching has presented its new classification of U.S. colleges and universities. The main differences at the research-end is a change from two types of research universities (intensive and extensive) to three types:

• Research Universities (very high research activity)
• Research Universities (high research activity)
• Doctoral/Research Universities

Other changes in the classification are discussed here at Inside HigherEd and in this pdf-document of the Foundation. According to Carnegie President Lee S. Shulman, the classification has become more multidimensional as a response to the increasingly complex higher education sector:

"The basic classification has been changed because the higher education landscape has become increasingly complex and multifaceted. We concluded that attempting to shoehorn all institutions into one category had introduced distortions, inaccuracies and obscurities that could be avoided. We introduced the five new classifications to reflect these complexities. And because many will rely on the basic classification as the 'front door' to the other classifications, we also decided to update and improve the basic system as well."

In Europe, the development of a similar classification is slowly getting started. Last year in August, a preliminary study on the possibilities for pan European institutional profiling was published (written by a broad group of experts, including several ex-colleagues of mine): Institutional Profiles, towards a typology of higher education institutions in Europe. In this report, the shift to a multidimensional classification (like the 5 new classifications in the Carnegie) was already proposed.

The European group is also talking with the Carnegie Foundation about a global classification.

Rank the Rankings

University Rankings are popular. And some of them are quite influential, even though their methodologies leave a lot to be desired. A good example of this influence is for instance the fact that in Malaysia, Ministers and even the Prime Minister have reacted to the Times Higher Education Supplement ranking of universities (very well reported on in this blog, here and here and here, and many more posts)

The Education Policy Institute now has a report on these league tables (a sort of ranking of rankings). Surprisingly (or not?), they point to the German model as a best practice. It's surprising because it's not a ranking in the way we know it, like the Newsweek ranking, the THES ranking or the Shanghai Jiao Tong Ranking.

This ranking is developed by the Centre for Higher Education Development (CHE) and its English version is offered through the DAAD website. In this ranking, you personally give your ranking criteria and the priority in these criteria. The site then gives you the best university for your subject (you can also search by university or by city).

The CHE methodology has also attracted the attention from other European countries such as Denmark, Belgium and the Netherlands (here they already started with a weak copycat of the CHE ranking). In the long term it might develop into a European wide ranking, where students are able to rank universities throughout Europe, based on their own preferences.

For those that still want to see a ranking. Here is my ranking of political science departments in Germany:

1. Humboldt-Universitaet Berlin
2. Universitaet Mannheim
3. Universitaet Tuebingen
4. Universitaet Bremen
5. Universitaet Konstanz

Globalisation: 99 Definitions & Perspectives

While I was looking for a file in my computer I stumbled upon an old document. It's a file with a list of different perspectives and definitions of globalisation that I assembled for my doctoral research some years ago. I thought it might be of useful for students and scholars that are trying to grasp the possible meanings of the term.

It is a list of 99 (give or take a few) views from different disciplines and different sectors. Most are from academics, ranging from anthropologists to economists and from philosophers to business gurus. It includes statements from people as diverse as Bill Gates, Karl Marx and Vandana Shiva and organisations ranging from Greenpeace to the World Bank.

I converted the list into a website that can be found here (pdf also available). If you think any perspectives should be added, let me know..

THES leak

The official top 200 of the world's universities (according to the Times Higher Education Supplement) will be published tomorrow. But a privileged copy is already available at this blog. For an analysis of the new list, have a look at this weblog.

My observations? My current university (University of Sydney) ranked 38th, slightly up from last years position of 40th. Australia ranked third in terms of the amount of universities in the top 200 with 17 universities. Not surprisingly, the US and the UK ranked 1st and 2nd.

My 'other' home country the Netherlands ranked 4th with 10 universities in the top 200 but does not have any universities in the top 50. This illustrates the way Dutch higher education is often typified: a plateau with a few peaks. The plateau is there, the peaks are getting higher...

Knowledge production shifts

I know. A lot can be said against the use of university rankings and even more against their methodologies. That said….the Times Higher education Supplement published their annual ranking of technology universities and institutions last Friday. The ranking is based on peer review assessment and on the number of citations per paper. They created 3 lists: one for technology universities, one for non-university institutions in science and one for non-university institutions in technology. Below are some of the results. In my view there are two important observations:

- The stable high positions of Asian universities. There are 4 Asian universities in the top 10 and 7 in the top 20. Continental Europe on the other hand, only has 2 universities in the top 20 (ETH Zurich and TU Delft). The non-university institutions on the other hand are located mainly in the US and some in the UK, Australia and Europe. But none in Asia.
- Another interesting observation is that the number of citations per paper is considerably higher in non-university institutions, especially for the institutions involved in science. Furthermore, most of the universities in the top 10 are public while many of the non-universities are private organisations. A shift in knowledge production from the public to the private domain?         

Click here to see the rankings