Singapore Top Universities Embrace “Beauty Contest” Criteria for Academic
Excellence
By MIKOspace
The most remarkable
outcome in the latest Times Higher Education (THE) 2015 World University Rankings announced last month was the phenomenal rise of two (of
the three) Singapore universities, the National University of Singapore (NUS)
and Nanyang Technological University (NTU), to 12th and 13th place
respectively. Both Singapore Universities are now ranked above Yale, Columbia,
EPF Lausanne and King’s College London.
This remarkable
achievement was attributed mostly to high scores for the reputation surveys,
the number of international students and faculty, none of which of course have
any validity or reliability as indicators or measures of excellence in learning
and/or teaching.
Together with
significant changes in the research citations component, the other another
important factors for the rise of NTU and NUS were their continuing remarkable
performance in the academic and employer surveys. NUS is at the top ten in the
world for academic reputation and employer reputation with a perfect score of
100 respectively. NTU is 52nd for the academic survey and 39th for employer
with scores in the nineties for both. This should not be surprising since NUS
and NTU provide nearly 95% of Singapore’s fresh university graduates.
This time, the skeptics
of Universities Rankings are further proven right. The 2015 World Universities
Rankings had made so many strange and implausible ranking shifts resulting in
many universities rising or falling by dozens and hundreds from their previous
rank. Truth is, THE had tweaked their “methodology”,
as with the other major ranker Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) World University Rankings, when it broke away with their data suppliers
Thomson Reuters at the end of 2014 and announced the dawn of a new era of
transparency and accountability.
Readers
should note that neither THE or QS have ever published the scientific basis of
their “methodology”; especially the criterion factors selected as measures of
“best” Universities, nor the population and samples of the respondents who
participated in surveys purportedly conducted and whose “data” were used to
compile the final annual rankings.
The announcements of the
2015 World Universities Rankings therefore came like the results of a beauty
contest with winners (those whose rankings have risen) congratulating
themselves with much self-flattery, while the losers (those whose rankings have
sank) are embarrassed into protesting only silently and wondering where indeed
they have gone so wrong in the past 12 months.
For example, Cambridge
and Oxford overtook and pushed Harvard into 6th place. If THE were to be believed, it was all
Harvard’s fault as she suffered a huge decline from 92.9 to 83.6 in THE’s
composite teaching indicator (whatever this presumes to measure). Whatever indeed happened in Harvard in
2014-2015 to “reduce” its teaching effectiveness and impact, according to THE
indicators, by 10%? Should Harvard
students therefore demand such fee payback based on this information?
Overnight, or precisely in
over just one year from 2014-2015, Asian universities suddenly became worse off,
except the Chinese Universities. The University of Tokyo dropped from 23rd to
43rd place in 2015, as she saw her research citations indicator fell from 74.7
points to 60.9, together with her sister University of Kyoto who plunged from
59th to 88th in 2015 for similar reductions in the score for
research citations. For some strange
unexplained reasons, the Professors of previous years in both top Japanese
Universities could no longer produce the same sterling quality of well-cited research
papers.
If THE Universities
evaluation were continued to be believed, the top Korean Universities had also suddenly
gone silly and stupid. From the top,
Seoul National University dropped 35 ranked positions and the Korean Institute
of Science and Technology (KAIST) 66 positions, due mostly to their
significantly reduced scores for teaching and research. Pohang University of
Science and Technology (POSTECH) also fell 50 places, losing points in all THE criteria,
despite earning good income from industry which she served but this was deemed
irrelevant for THE Rankings.
Can the same Methodology
which had improved both NTU and NUS rankings so significantly be trusted to be
robust, vigorous and sophisticated?
It should be
increasingly obvious to any intelligent researcher that the 2015 World
University Rankings have created its own rankings based on new, revised
criteria such as to render it incomparable with all their previous 2009-2014
rankings.
Specifically, if the
Dutch University of Twente (ranked 149th by THE) deserved to be in the top 150
this year, then its 2014 ranking which placed Twente outside the top 200-225
could not possibly be valid. And if KAIST
should indeed fall 66 places from 2014, then either its 2015 rankings (148th)
or its 2014’s (52th) were inaccurate, or they both were. This conclusion applies equally to all the
universities whose rankings may have ”improved”.
Singapore Universities have devoted much time and resources since 2007 to satisfy the dubious
criteria of bogus university excellence, including getting rid of distinguished and eminent local Professors to meet the World University Rankings
preferential criteria for foreign faculty, as well as its preference for more
foreign students which NTU and NUS attracted with hundreds of free scholarships
(since the Criteria did not specify only paid students were counted).
NTU and NUS managers and
administrators, and their experts, should now carefully study the 2015 World
University Rankings to discover what their critics and skeptics, many of whom
included eminent University Professors, educators and the United Nations
UNESCO, have been warning over the past years the Rankings were published –
that the World University Rankings are bogus and misleading, since their
indicators lack academic validity and have no scientifically-established
construct and they utilize a highly questionable survey and data collection methodology
to create information for dubious ranking results which could not survive due
diligence or methodological and reliability scrutiny.
Singapore universities
should maintain our Integrity and be honestly professional, and reject using
the spurious World University Rankings to position our great Institutions of
Higher Learning because of their lack of validity and reliability in
Methodology and questionable measures of learning and research excellence.
The 2015 World
University Rankings is final and conclusive proof that claims by the rankers
over the past 10 years that they have carefully calibrated indicators and a
uniquely trusted and vigorous methodology are untrue and bogus at best. There
is no reason why the Singapore government and Singapore university administrators
and academic experts should continue to be fooled repeatedly by such scams and dubious products.
Singapore universities should no longer
participate in any “World University Rankings” Fraud.
Singapore’s presence in the World University Rankings invariably lends
our hard-earned Reputation for Authenticity and Honesty to mask their lack of
credibility, validity and reliability. Our Universities must have the same high
standards of integrity and authenticity as the rest of the Nation.
Related:
3 comments:
"There is no reason why the Singapore government and Singapore university administrators and academic experts should continue to be fooled repeatedly by such scams and dubious products."
MIKOspace as quoted by RB
Just too bad lah, MIKOspace did not even contest the last election as a PAP candidate, let alone being appointed as education minister.
So I think his views are more or less as impactful as Dr Chee Soon Juan or RB's views.
Can swim mean can swim.Never blame underwear too big.
真金不怕火。Genuine gold no scare fire .
Remind me of my colleague who always have that entitlement mentality.Must get Champions in every karaoke competition .To him , if not within 3rd position it must be due to the judges favouring certain contestant,
inexperience, bias,machiam machiam..
What is so important about position. Another teng ah gee on the loose.
LOL.
What is go great about abusing your position to take advantage of mei meis?
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