# World University Rankings...



## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

I just heard a radio report that Australia has done well in these recently. The Australian National University scored 38th in the Times one and 26th place in the QS one. But I'm perplexed as to why (in both rankings) the University of Sydney is above the University of New South Wales. I've always seen the latter as more progressive, innovative, cutting edge, the former as quite conservative and stagnating. But I don't really know & haven't really looked into the criteria for these surveys.

Anyway, how do universities from your country or region stack up in comparison to those across the world? Does this mean anything to you or correlate with your experience or those you know, etc.?

Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2011-12

QS World University Rankings 2011-12


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## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

I think these lists are generally more useful in the middle of the rankings, rather than at the top or the bottom. Institutions like Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, MIT _etc._ defy ranking I think - they are each a world of their own; each bestow the maximum possible respect if they appear on your CV; and each have such similar successes in terms of graduate employment and academic excellence that, really, they all ought to tie for 1st place, because the distance between these factors is minimal.

Sometimes, you can glean useful information from the lists. For example, if you're interested in a particular department or field, some guides rank universities multiple times in accordance with subject area, so you might see how much funding they give to your subject of interest. However, this is not really something you want to be relying on solely from a newspaper ranking.

I think it is more useful with average-level institutions, and for people who are likely to apply to them, because the gaps in measures such as finances, employment, population, and whatever measures of student happiness, may not necessarily be large, but they are larg_er_ and so more significant.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

^^ I think you make sense there & I'd add/extrapolate that the links I gave were the general rankings, but on those websites there are links to more specific rankings/lists eg. by region or profession, etc. 

& it may well be that, despite my thoughts in my OP, in some specific ways or areas of research, etc. that I don't know about the Uni of Sydney is "better" or whatever than the Uni of NSW. But both lists are quite accurate in terms of having Australian National Uni as the "top" Aussie uni, as it does have a good reputation here among people on the ground & I know a few acquaintances, friends of freinds, etc. who've actually moved to Canberra (our capital which is where that uni is at) to study specifically there...


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## waldvogel (Jul 10, 2011)

Most universities have areas in which they specialize, making it very difficult to rank them in any coherent fashion. As an example, virtually everyone would agree that of the three universities in the city of Toronto, the rankings would go: University of Toronto >> York University > Ryerson University.

However, if I were a graduating high-school student who wanted to study Fine Arts, York would clearly be the best choice, and if i wanted to study Journalism, Ryerson would be the best bet. 

There are other factors that affect a university's reputation that have absolutely nothing to do with the quality of education that you would get as an undergraduate student. I graduated from the University of Toronto, home of at least five Nobel Prize winners. During my entire stay there, I went to exactly one lecture given by one of these professors - and that in molecular chemistry, a field that I took no classes in. 

One feature that seems to get no attention whatsoever is the average class size for an undergrad course. In many of the first-year courses in Calculus, Economics, Biology - in other words, many of the prerequisites for future professional programmes - class sizes are three-digit numbers. And the first digit might not be a 1. Or a 2. At the University of Waterloo - world-renowned for its computer science and engineering programmes, the first year economics class is a series of lectures that you download to your laptop. This offers a wonderful opportunity to ask questions of the professor and interact with your classmates about the ideas that you have just learned...

Perhaps these problems go away when you pay $40,000 or more a year. I rather doubt it - more likely, the Medical Robotics building is getting new equipment and has hired a superstar researcher at a CEO salary.


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## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

waldvogel said:


> One feature that seems to get no attention whatsoever is the average class size for an undergrad course. In many of the first-year courses in Calculus, Economics, Biology - in other words, many of the prerequisites for future professional programmes - class sizes are three-digit numbers. And the first digit might not be a 1. Or a 2. At the University of Waterloo - world-renowned for its computer science and engineering programmes, the first year economics class is a series of lectures that you download to your laptop. This offers a wonderful opportunity to ask questions of the professor and interact with your classmates about the ideas that you have just learned...
> 
> Perhaps these problems go away when you pay $40,000 or more a year. I rather doubt it - more likely, the Medical Robotics building is getting new equipment and has hired a superstar researcher at a CEO salary.


The UK may be complaining about the recent hike to £9,000 as the maximum level of tuition fees, but I am SO glad I don't live on the other side of the pond! I get the absolute best teaching imaginable over here for a relative steal!


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## Almaviva (Aug 13, 2010)

QS Ranking:
École Normale Supérieure (France) #33
Ohio State University (USA) #111

THE Ranking:
École Normale Supérieure (France) # 59
Ohio State University (USA) #57

Just look at these numbers, and realize that there is something wrong with these rankings.

So, yes, the very top and the very bottom are profoundly different, this much I believe everyone agrees with. It does make a difference if your diploma is from Harvard (#2) as compared to, say, the University of Idaho (bottom 50) in a ranking of 400 universities (ironically, these are the schools that respectively, Barack Obama and Sarah Palin have attended - see what I mean?).

You don't need a ranking to figure this much out, that Harvard is much better than the University of Idaho.

But when you get to the middle when the differences are supposed to be significant, you get to very questionable results, when differences in criteria will make the ranking of specific universities vary wildly, as shown by the rankings of the ÉNS and the OSU above.

So the bottom line is that these rankings are less useful than they seem, and at best should be taken with a grain of salt.


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

waldvogel said:


> Most universities have areas in which they specialize, making it very difficult to rank them in any coherent fashion. As an example, virtually everyone would agree that of the three universities in the city of Toronto, the rankings would go: University of Toronto >> York University > Ryerson University.
> 
> However, if I were a graduating high-school student who wanted to study Fine Arts, York would clearly be the best choice, and if i wanted to study Journalism, Ryerson would be the best bet.
> 
> ...


I agree totally on each school having their strong points based on program. In Canada at least these rankings are simply biased towards which schools are the largest and therefore bound to have a higher research output and get more citations: U of T, UBC, Alberta, Montreal. I don't know anyone who would consider UBC and Alberta to have a better reputation than the smaller and far more selective Queen's.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

My dear old alma mater is ranked higher in the QS rating, so I believe that one is more reliable. Neither of them are perfect though.


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## Vaneyes (May 11, 2010)

Outside of M.I.T., Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Cambridge, and Oxford...well, isn't everybody else just camping out?


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## Chi_townPhilly (Apr 21, 2007)

My workplace is a 20 minute drive (conditions allowing) to Princeton- which was top-10 stuff on the first list, and just out of the top dozen on the other.

I noticed that the University of Chicago was in the top 10 on both lists. When I was a High-Schooler, I fantasized about attending the University of Chicago (pretty much in accordance with my unmerited cock-sure high self-opinion at that time), but with my high-school GPA, they didn't want to know me.

This brings up a more relevant question- and that is... what constitutes a "great university?" Some years back, the authors of "The Bell Curve" argued that there wasn't really a significant amount of "value added" in the classroom education of the schools with even the greatest of reputations... and that recruiters visited those places for a reason parallel to Willie Sutton's explanation for robbing banks: just as banks are "where the money is," high-prestige universities are "where the intelligent people are." [But also keeping in mind that this intelligence was within each individual prior to being collected up with others and concentrated into certain select places.]

I could say _so much more_ about this... but I think I'd better restrain myself, as others might not be so patient re: this digression.


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## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

I think the comparison between banks and universities is interesting.

Although there are some things that distinguish great universities - for example, unique teaching systems; state-of-the-art equipment and research; mammothesque libraries etc. - they are similar in a lot of respects, it's just that the things they do that are the same are done _better_ at the top unis because they attract the most intelligent people to do them.


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