On the earth.

Stand, walk, stroll over the earth,

stretch out fingers, grasp the necklace with a catholic cross

stretching out to destiny

as a human being,

who stands, walks and rest upon the earth,

pierced by woodwind, autumn sun, the howl from the far night.

Why people debate over university rankings

It's not without controversial every time when an institution publishes its own version of world university ranking, some look basically similar with others, some don't, some shock. There are some rankings that differ great a lot from others, but people don't feel earthquake because these rankings have their distinct dimension and aim. Exampli Gratia, the ranking published by Washington Montly College Guide Website, in which UCSD received incredible high position(2nd), has its own philosophy in thinking about what is the definition of a good college. It emphasized the career opportunity for "ordinary" undergrads (not everyone goes to Wallstreet right?). Ignorant people get angry on this kind of ranking since their own schools were not in. But a look into methodology and philosophy tells you to calm down. You don't demand steak tastes like kebab right?

Among the ones that often shock people, the first come to mind might be TIMES Higher Education. Why people give noise over it? Why there is a curse between a few proponents and massive opponents of Times ranking? The simple storyline is this ranking disturbs. US schools are generally ranked lower than British and European than they are often anticipated to be. A few Chinese universities rise to even within top50, a phenomenal accident unacceptable by two categories of people: the number of people who were motivated by jealousy may not be minor, but a more convincing and determinative reason might be the prevalent disbelief of any official institution(note that normally universities and colleges in China are state-owned) among Chinese people. A possibly false Lay belief that powerful economy brings powerful education also stimulated resistance to Times ranking because people believe US education shouldn't be worse than that of UK. This is the social layer of the distrust of Times ranking.

I don't by all means want to say Times cheats on ranking. But its biggest failure is not having brought their methodology to front. They do have a concrete and somewhat detailed methodology of the ranking, but their effort of trying to interpret their method before letting people read their ranking is at best weak. The same name has different content. Though they are all called automobile, you have to distinguish truck from car, van from coupe before any honest intention to purchase. In science and engineering, it's easier but by no means effortless to clarify the definition of a conception that has been commonly but mistakenly accepted by the mass. For long until now, petites bourgoises wishfully deem Schroedinger's cat to be so revolutionary and "postmodern"(sick to this word) that Schroedinger himself would be terrified to accept the halo. Physicists can show how much Schroedinger's theory is linked to classical boring physics, which immediately loses taste in the sight of petites bourgeoise. But a Fait Social requires more effort to show people what its definition and real content is. A University Ranking of what? Noticing the tremendously different emphasis between Times, ARSW and USNews, there should be no debating about which is accurate. Times included 30% weight of Teaching Environment in its method, including subdimensions such as teaching reputation survey, Phd/Bachelor ratio, Phd awards number, undergrads admitted, income. This does not only measure the teaching capacity(and still surveyed among subjects about reputation) instead of research motivation of a school, it also permit the impact of the school scale. The bigger, the richer, the better. You have enormous grads and undergrads, you win. I am of course not at all depressed seeing my undergrad school ranked top200, and other bunch of Chinese schools are there too. But you must want to consider how BIG are Chinese universities, especially when higher education is an industrialized section in a country with 1.4 billion more people. Income shan't become a center of dispute but there is still much difference from how you measure research. Funding obtain is part of research, but not necessary, plus, you might also want to know how much money Chinese government invest wastefully into universities, but let me restrain from talking about the academic corruption.

Compared to other rankings that almost omit teaching, scale, and income, Times ranking is more biased towards rich, populous, and big universities. Times ranking is at least a good index for undergrads who seek awesome environment, but not that much for grads. The debate over rankings, is meaningless as Wittgenstein said: there is no philosophical problem without the daily and gamely misuse of language. There shan't be a ranking dispute, were you ever read their ranking methodology.