Thursday, January 29, 2015

THE Under Fire in the Far North and Down Under

Times Higher Education  (THE) has been attacked for the latest spin-off from its world rankings. Alex Usher of Higher Education Strategy Associates has tweeted "your "most international unis" rankings lack even the barest face validity. Galway more intl than Harvard? C'mon"

The higher education editor of the Australian, Julie Hare, reports that Australian observers are surprised that Monash university, reputed to be the most international Australian university, has been ranked so low and quotes a comment at THE: "What cretin can assert that LSE and Cambridge are less "international" than Brunel and Canterbury?"

I wonder if there will be similar comments on THE's preview, in advance of a summit in Qatar, of its forthcoming MENA rankings. This is the top five of a research impact indicator based on field and year normalised citations. The first place goes to Texas A and M University Qatar. The other four are the Lebanese American University, King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah, Qatar University and the American University of Beirut.

In case you are wondering, Texas A and M Qatar does have someone on  the Large Hadron Collider project. 

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