Comments for QS Intelligence Unit

Comment on Financial factors can be a dangerous measure by Anonymous

Anonymous — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 09:03:44 +0000

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Comment on QS.com Asian University Rankings due to provide insight on a larger number of indicators by may

may — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 09:13:49 +0000

i like QS ranking it really work hard to rank educational university , we are seeking to have the same thing in web site ranking of university Eduroute

Comment on Business schools to blame for the credit crunch? by Ben Sowter

Ben Sowter — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 10:18:04 +0000

I often think computing provides a good microcosm of your point here. Computing changes so quickly that universities and colleges have no chance of keeping up with the latest developments. There are two approaches – one that teaches a specific language or software – these programs tend to have state of the art facilities and more recent installations of everything required – yet the training quickly and inevitably become obsolete. The traditional university approach is to train the mind – coach the principles that can then be adapted to any language or software years after the student graduates – in this last case the student may learn in shabby labs on old software versions but they pick up transferable, adaptable skills. Whilst I agree with the value of work experience, I believe it is mistake to dismiss traditional forms of learning in favour of exclusively more vocational forms.

On a trip two years ago I visited two nanotechnology labs – one at KAIST in South Korea and another at Mahidol University in Thailand. The first was an impressive installation with clean rooms and multi million pound machines for cutting and handling silcon wafers and the like, in the latter case the professor had built the machine from a combination of purchased components, recycled equipment and even old motorcycle parts. Despite the gulf in the equipment (and the reality that academic breakthroughs are surely more likely to occur in the first instance) it struck me that the real education was happening in the second… that in the second instance the students were that much closer to the science. Perhaps this is an example of how practical aspects of education can be found not only in the workplace, but also with some innovative thinking from faculty members at universities.

Comment on QS.com Asian University Rankings: Beyond the obvious… by Top Ranking

Top Ranking — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 16:46:10 +0000

Japanese universities are always ranked among the best in the region, they were in the top ranking in the previous Asiaweek rankings as well.

Comment on Business schools to blame for the credit crunch? by Anthony

Anthony — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 19:06:05 +0000

Education has and always will lag behind today’s business practices. They change so fasts they would constantly be rewriting courses. What students need is more real world work experience to complement there degree whilst they study.

Comment on The Impact of Rankings by bensowter

bensowter — Fri, 22 May 2009 19:21:28 +0000

The full report is available here… http://www.ihep.org/assets/files/publications/g-l/ImpactofCollegeRankings.pdf

Comment on QS.com Asian University Rankings: The Top 100 by bensowter

bensowter — Mon, 18 May 2009 19:29:39 +0000

Thanks for your comments. Crunching the data for joint authorship is definitely an interesting thought, and comparatively simple to achieve. It would only provide insight on research focused relationships though. We could, perhaps use it as a corroborating factor for partnerships of this type.

Ghost MOUs are definitely an issue – but this is where corroboration and activity rating from the partner institution come to bear. These, combined with some weighting based on the rank of the partner school MAY form a good indicator. In our experience more highly reputed institutions tend to be more selective in partnership terms and less tolerant of inactivity.

Ultimately, we have found that asking for data has been a catalyst for the improvement of universities’ ability to provide it. So let’s see what happens.

Comment on QS.com Asian University Rankings: The Top 100 by globalhighered

globalhighered — Mon, 18 May 2009 14:23:45 +0000

Hi Ben…the latter idea is interesting, though I know that universities themselves have been having a very hard time sorting this out. You could map out formal partnership memberships, but the quality/depth of international collaboration, in practice, is not captured by memberships, and it would be difficult to identify one or two people who can speak about the reality of the situation. Ghost MOUs exist in ever so many universities, as well.

You could crunch the international joint authorship data…and map it out. This is a proxy measure that would be more effective in generating insights about this issue, and you don’t need university input to provide data. BUT it would reflect the limitations of systems run by Thomson Reuters and Scopus, including the problem of limited languages factored in.

Comment on The geography of rankings by Jens

Jens — Fri, 15 May 2009 05:39:51 +0000

Thanks for the link to my site. Glad that you like it. The site is still in beta, but if it is helpful I will try to spend some more time on it to improve it. Cheers, Jens

Comment on QS.com Asian University Rankings: The Top 100 by bensowter

bensowter — Thu, 14 May 2009 07:13:01 +0000

One of the plans we have on the table is for a partnership/collaboration tracker that would enable institutions to reflect the strength of their partnerships with other international institutions in a range of categories – research and exchange being the most obvious but we could also embrace your suggestion in this context.. Institutions could talk about the nature of a partnership and rate its level of activity. Partner institutions could corroborate the existence and status of the relationship.

In time we would plan to develop a potential additional indicator for rankings that would take into account a combination of the number of corroborated partnerships (discarding inactive ones), the activity rating (we would take the lower score from the two parties) and the quality of the partner institution (based on their rank position).

Feedback on this idea would be very welcome.