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University rankings are useful, but they don’t tell the whole story.

University rankings are useful, but they don’t tell the whole story.

Not much can rival the excitement surrounding the Oscars, but the announcement of the university rankings certainly comes close. The rankings, be they global or for Asia, generate waves of anticipation and disappointment, along with some promises from university presidents and chancellors to do better in the future.

Chris Davis

Not much can rival the excitement surrounding the Oscars, but the announcement of the university rankings certainly comes close. The rankings, be they global or for Asia, generate waves of anticipation and disappointment, along with some promises from university presidents and chancellors to do better in the future.

The Times Higher Education (THE) World University Rankings and the QS World University Rankings are closely watched by academics, industry leaders, and even governments. Parents use the rankings to select a university for their child.

Although most agree that rankings are a useful way to evaluate key areas of a university's performance, those who compile the rankings admit they can never be exhaustive. Higher education is diverse, and there are specialisations, areas of performance, and strengths that the single composite score does not take account of.

To arrive at a composite score, areas measured include teaching (the learning environment), research (volume, income and reputation), citations (research influence), international outlook (staff, students, and research), and industry income (knowledge transfer).

The range of indicators and measurements are then combined into an overall score that is used to determine the final ranking. Some rating panels include the number of Nobel Prize winners a university has produced in their evaluation process.

The league tables for MBA programmes are another area in which rankings figure strongly in the choices of prospective applicants. Ratings metrics for MBA programmes usually include the starting salary for graduates, peer assessment, placement success, student and alumni satisfaction, and recruiter scores.

After the release of the 2016 THE Asian University rankings on June 20, Duncan Ross, THE data and analytics director, explained how calibrated performance indicators and methodologies are used to measure research-intensive universities. The universities are assessed across all their core missions, including teaching, research, knowledge transfer and international outlook.

For instance, teaching accounts for 25 per cent of the score, while reputation is allocated 10 per cent. The most prominent indicator in the research (volume, income and reputation) area accounts for 30 per cent of the section score. Reputation, which measures a university's standing for research excellence among its peers, accounts for 15 per cent with research income and research productivity accounting for the remaining 15 per cent.

Citations, which looks at a university's role in spreading new knowledge and ideas, also accounts for 30 per cent of the total score. Other areas measured include the staff-to-student ratio, doctorate-to-bachelor's ratio, doctorates awarded to academic staff, and institutional income, which accesses the infrastructure and facilities available to students and staff.

Ross said research influence is gauged by the number of times a university's published work is cited by scholars globally. As part of the 2016 ranking process, bibliometric data was used to examine more than 51 million citations in 11.3 million journal articles published over five years. "Importantly for Asia, our data ability has been extended to include published scientific papers that have not been written in English,'' said Ross.

Peter Mathieson, president of the University of Hong Kong (HKU), said that rankings play a significant role in the way that universities are viewed by potential students. But writing in the University Rankings 2016 digital supplement, Mathieson said there are areas which the rankings do not, or cannot, easily measure.

These include the student experience, community engagement, alumni loyalty, societal impact, and creativity and innovation among the staff and the students. He also pointed out that frequent methodological changes, a selective usage of data, and variability between the rankings from different panels can impact the rankings.

The THE rankings place the National University of Singapore and Nanyang Technology University (Singapore) in first and second spot, Peking University (China) third, HKU in fourth place, Tsinghua University (China), in fifth and Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) in sixth.

The number of Asian institutions represented has risen to 18 this year in the THE World Reputation Rankings, up from 10 in 2015. The recent THE Asian University rankings were released at a time when more focus is being placed on higher education influences gravitating from west to east.

Tony Chan, president of HKUST, believes Hong Kong's success is part of a "wider story about the rise of East Asia over the past few decades". Chan said young universities across Asia such as HKUST have benefitted from governments' belief in the power of higher education. The willingness of governments to commit resources, coupled with a growing push among institutions in the region, has led to international recognition.

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