Monday, February 1, 2010

ACADEMIC POPULARITY CONTESTS: PART ONE

Two academic rankings are in the news this week, one from Shanghai University, Ranking of Top Schools in the World, and the other from Tilburg University, Survey of Top Economics Schools. School rankings always seemed silly to me. Inasmuch as there are research schools (scored according to how many publications pour out the publication tap) and teaching schools (scored by admissions competitiveness), selection criteria do not always measure the quality of education or the percentage of students served. At best, there is always an elitist Simon Scowl favoring one factor or the other (with neither of special significance).

Despite concerns about our country losing a competitive edge across various sectors, it is gratifying to note our high marks in higher education. We have 55% of the world’s top 100 schools and 30% of the world’s top 500 schools. The United Kingdom ranks second with 11% and 8%, respectively.

However, raw numbers can be misleading. If one considers the ratio of top schools to served populations, these rankings change significantly. Among the top 100 schools, the U.S. (Octopus score = 12) falls below Switzerland (30) and Denmark (20). Among the top 500 schools, the U.S. (Octopus score = 7) ranks below Sweden (16), Switzerland (16), Israel (14), United Kingdom (12), Australia (10), Canada (8), and Denmark (8), respectively. Why are these ratios more important than raw numbers? Countries with higher ratios are educating more students ... by a factor of more than two to one in some aforesaid countries. Although our worldwide ranking is respectable, there are still other countries doing a better job.

H/T to Infidel753 for posting the Shanghai Ranking.

12 comments:

  1. While we have impressive colleges and universities, seems it is NOT usually our best and brightest being able to avail themselves of a great education but simply our well-heeled and best connected.

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  2. How true, Rocky. The cost of higher education in the US is one of the most shocking (to me) aspects of life here, right after health care.

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  3. Rocky: "our well-heeled and best connected"

    Reminds me of our former president, GWB, who was a mediocre student at Yale and a poor testimonial for Harvard's MBA program ... who murdered the English language with every utterance. And let us not forget those on athletic scholarships who make us wonder what we really value in life ... academic excellence or jock worship.

    Elizabeth, the high cost offers a Hobson's choice between getting a good education versus a lifetime of debt. No wonder people are choosing to dumb down. What you don't know won't leave you feeling defeated and humiliated.

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  4. No wonder people are choosing to dumb down.

    Yeah, some choice.

    I would go to back to school in a heartbeat if only I could afford it. As it is, we're trying to figure out how to pay for our children's education, forget my own.

    I didn't realize how "spoiled" we were under socialism, with our free health care and free education open to all those who were able and willing, and not just those who could afford it.

    Without those two "privileges" -- and I use quotes here because I firmly believe they are really basic human rights -- free health care and free education on all levels, there is no reasonable hope for genuine progress and equality in any society.

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  5. Elizabeth, consider me a "libertarian" socialist.

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  6. I may lose some friends over this, but I think our universities, if not our entire educational system is as much of a medieval relic as the idiotic hats and robes we still dress the high priests of education with. The infrastructure and the number of people employed in delivering information reflects a technology as obsolete as semaphore signals or the Pony Express. With the absurd cost of maintaining huge campuses and student housing and expensive libraries and thousands of lecturers lecturing the same things, we are, in my pissed off opinion, cloistering education and selling it at a high markup though an exclusive dealer network to the detriment of the public.

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  7. Captain, on one hand, I can't find fault in your argument. Online learning is certainly more cost effective as a delivery vehicle, but there is a part of me that is very traditional and old-fashioned.

    I rather like those medieval campuses draped in ivy, that musty old library smell, the holy hush of a rare manuscript room, and the school chapel swelling with sounds of a pipe organ. These sensory experiences connect me in some peculiar way. In fact, I feel more at home living in a university town than anywhere else.

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  8. I agree with that - the more medieval the better, but I've been too ill served by schools and had my goals thwarted too often to like the way it's done.

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  9. Capt., I totally share your pissed off opinion.

    Brings to mind J.D. Salinger's words,

    I think I despise every school and college in the world, but the ones with the best reputation first.

    (From this week New Yorker's remembrance by Lillian Ross.)

    Octo, I'm all for the medieval ivy-wrapped buildings and the musty smell of manuscripts -- love'em, but NOT for $45,000 a year combined with a semi-sociopathic competition and pecking order.

    Learning should be free and available to all willing. (And yes, it is, in a sense, especially today with the open access to so many sources of information; but I mean the formal kind of learning that leads to a socially recognized and accepted profession via degrees, supervised training, etc. Yep, I'm talking again about that awful, awful socialism.)

    Speaking of a high markup not worth the investment: Cost of college degree may not be worth it.

    BTW, my criticism extends to the (ridiculous, IMO) set-up of the US higher ed with the four-year college ending with a (largely worthless) bachelor's degree.

    What American students learn in their four-year college is what we used to learn in our high school, after which we went directly to universities (or technical schools) graduating after 5 years with a master's degree. (All free, mind you.) And during those 5 years of studying for the master's, we covered a lot, if not all, of the material that here goes into the Ph.D. programs.

    So IMO and experience, dumbing down the K-12 education serves to needlessly prolong the (expensive and for profit) higher ed, which in itself could be compressed, without harm, when it comes to its content (in many fields, I think, though perhaps not all).

    Can't help but think that profit yet again is THE driving reason behind this strange system. IMH-but-pissed-off-O, of course.

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  10. Elizabeth: "Speaking of a high markup not worth the investment: Cost of college degree may not be worth it."

    Wage stagnation is not the fault of colleges and universities. Again, I blame corporate America for bleeding the middle class ... my reason for focusing on faulty economic policy in Part Two of this post (above).

    Lets talk about globalization and outsourcing. If a corporation wants to evade local environmental, minimum wage, and labor laws, it simply moves operations to unregulated, lower cost markets.

    There was a time when only the lowest wage workers were vulnerable. Over time, middle management and the professional ranks turned vulnerable. Today, MDs and PhDs are losing jobs in the pharmaceutical industry as their jobs move to Asia. Yes, you read this right: MDs and PhDs. Today, everyone is vulnerable ... including the best and the brightest.

    What does our society value these days? Cheap shit from Wal-Mart and Joe the Dumber ... certainly not academic excellence and achievement. Corporate American killed that too.

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  11. I think it's telling that we mean financially profitable when we say "worth it." When I was in school we used to laugh at the very idea of a business major and a political science major was suspected of being a loser.

    Of course I went to a liberal arts school ( do they still have those?) and ideas have reversed - why study art history, ethics, Sanskrit when it won't make as much money as learning how to sell stuff or do leveraged buyouts? I think we've all played a part in making education into job training.

    Then again, more than 99% of what I know wasn't learned in school anyway - it just got in the way of my reading.

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  12. Octo, wage stagnation may not be the fault of our higher ed institutions, but they are responsible, in a large measure, for what they charge their students.

    The monies that institutions like Harvard hog for their own needs would cover tuition of thousands of students each year -- at Harvard. (This is what my Harvard-educated lawyer-friend has told me just recently, with quite a bit of indignation on her part over the immoral and greedy practices of her own school.) It's reasonable to assume that the situation is no different in other institutions of higher learning, which, BTW, raise their tuition each year.

    And that's just the fiscal element of the education's worth.

    Then there is the other part -- you know, education itself, which, as Capt. notes, has to come to reflect the values of our society (as it is always the case). So, yes, MBAs are great; MAs in English or ancient cultures, not so much.

    And this -- bastardizing and monetizing our education -- starts early on, with elimination of all those "non-essential" programs from our K-12 curriculum -- i.e., arts and music. The goal of such an education is to produce new and skilled cogs in the financial machine that serves to enrich the wealth of the elites.

    Our education is only as good as our society. So we have what we deserve, unfortunately.

    Oh, I could rant on, but I better stop. I could tell you, for example, that in our socialist (OMG!) educational system, way back when in Poland, we started separate classes in geography, world history, chemistry, physics and biology (in addition to the core subjects, math and Polish, and art and music, plus a mandatory foreign language, which happened to be Russian -- surprise, I know) at the third and fourth grade level, progressing from there. What American kids are (not) learning is stunning, especially when I compare it with our education -- under the evil and poor (because, yes, we were poor) socialism. Eh.

    Capt. said:

    more than 99% of what I know wasn't learned in school anyway - it just got in the way of my reading

    Welcome to the (gifted) club! :)

    Seriously. I work with gifted kids and this is their general attitude toward school (and one that I completely agree with and share myself, BTW).

    On a related and funnier (or not, really) note, see this.

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