To answer the question in the previous post, how did Babol Noshirvani University of Technology in Iran do so well in the latest THE rankings, part of the answer is that it has two highly cited researchers in engineering, Davood Domiri Ganji and Mohsen Sheikholeslami. I see no reason to question the...

The THE world rankings and their regional offshoots have always been a source of entertainment mixed with a little bit of bewilderment. Every year a succession of improbable places jumps into the upper reaches of the citations indicator which is supposed to measure global research impact. Usually it...

The latest THE world rankings were published yesterday. As always, the most interesting part is the field- and year- normalised citations indicator that supposedly measures research impact.Over the last few years, an array of implausible places have zoomed into the top ranks of this metric, sometimes...

The previous post was the 1,000...

This comment is by Christian Schulz of the University of Hamburg. He points that the University of Hamburg's rise in the Shanghai rankings was not the result of highly cited researchers moving from other institutions but the improvement of research within the university.If this is something that applies...

This post is by Pablo Achard of the University of Geneva. It refers to  the Shanghai subject rankings. However, the problem of outliers in subject and regional rankings is one that affects all the well known rankings and will probably become more important over the next few yearsHow a single article...

In the previous post I referred to the vulnerabilities that have developed in the most popular world rankings, THE, QS and Shanghai ARWU, indicators that have a large weighting and can be influenced by universities that know how to work the system or sometimes are just plain lucky.In the latest QS rankings four...

There is a problem with any sort of standardised testing. A test that is useful when a score has no financial or social significance becomes less valid when coaching industries workout how to squeeze a few points out of docile candidates and motivation becomes as important as aptitude.Similarly, a metric...

Universitas 21 (U21) produces an annual ranking not of universities but of 50 national university systems. There are 25 criteria grouped in four categories, resources, connectivity, environment and output. There is also an overall league table.The resources section consists of various aspects of expenditure...

In view of the remarkable performance of Veltech University in the THE Asian Rankings, rankers, administrators and publishers need to think seriously about the impact of self-citation, and perhaps also intra-institutional ranking. Here is the abstract of an article by Justin W Flatt, Alessandro Blassime,...

From the Economist ranking of British universities, which is based on the difference between expected and actual graduate earnings. That, as Basil Fawlty said in a somewhat different context, explains a lot.  "Many of the universities at the top of our rankings convert bad grades into good...

Malaysia has had a complicated relationship with global university rankings. There  was a fleeting moment of glory in 2004 when Universiti Malaya, the national flagship, leaped into the top 100 of the THES-QS world rankings. Sadly, it turned out that this was the result of an error by the rankers...

I have just come across a site, ACCESS, that includes a lot of excellent material on university rankings by Ruth A Pagell, who is Emeritus Faculty Librarian at Emory University and Adjunct Faculty at the University of Hawaii.I'll provide specific links to some of the articles laterGo here  ...

It is reported that the Philippines is introducing free tuition in state universities.It will not really be free. The government will have to find P100 billion from a possible  "re-allocation of resources."If there is a graduate premium for degrees from Philippine universities then this measure...

According to Times Higher Education (THE), the UK has educated more heads of state and government than any other country. The USA is a close second followed by France. No doubt this will get a let of publicity as the THE summit heads for London but, considering the state of the world, is it really something...

America's Top Colleges is published by Forbes business magazine. It is an unabashed assessment of institutions from the viewpoint of the student as investor. The metrics are post-graduate success, debt, student experience, graduation rate and academic success.The top three colleges are Harvard, Stanford...

Hobsons, the education technology company, has produced a ranking of global university rankings. The information provided is very limited and i hope there will be more in a while. Here are the top five according to a survey of international students inbound to the USA.1.    QS World University...