Tuesday, 25 September 2012

University season part 9: International rankings

Okay back to our university season, Lee has a question for me.

Hi limpeh, i know this is random, but i got a question.
Why is it that UK unis fare 'worse' in terms of international ranking?
I am writing up my personal statement for history at Durham, St Andrews, LSE, Warwick and UCL, but i just dont quite understand why not even LSE comes close to many US unis. can you pls help me in this
LSE's international ranking confuses me. 

Thanks for your question Lee. I did have a quick look at three international rankings to understand the system and okay, there are more than three but looking at three is enough for me to illustrate my point. It is very difficult to compile an accurate international ranking system! Let's just take two universities from your list and see where their rankings.
http://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/world-university-rankings/2012
http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-university-rankings/2011-2012/top-400.html
http://www.usnews.com/education/worlds-best-universities-rankings/top-400-universities-in-the-world

QS ranking: LSE #69, UCL #4
Times: LSE #47 UCL #17
US News: LSE #64 UCL #7

You may think that LSE has had some kind of catastrophic failure in being ranked so far from the top whilst UCL (with the exception of the Times' ranking) is ranked a lot higher in the global list (#4 on the QS ranking beating Oxford, wow!). But check this out, the Guardian ranking for UK universities ranks LSE #3 in the UK behind Cambridge and Oxford. http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/table/2012/may/21/university-league-table-2013 That's right, ahead of UCL at #6 on that domestic ranking. Go figure.
Are you going to be happy with your university?

So how can LSE be #3 and UCL be #6 domestically, whilst UCL is ranked so much higher than LSE internationally? Guess what? I don't have an answer! In terms of their reputation, both institutions are equally impressive and it is hard to understand these rankings sometimes. I think there is also a bias in the ranking towards universities where English is the language of instruction. Take Seoul National University SNU, the no. 1 university in South Korea. QS #37, Times #124, US News #42. Well the main language of instruction at SNU is Korean and it tends to cater overwhelmingly for a local South Korean population who speak Korean as a first language.

If you think Singaporean students study hard, that is nothing compared to the Korean students - the sacrifices they make to get into a good Korean university is unreal. Are Korean universities as good as the ones in Britain or America? Well the proof is in the success of Korean technology - for a country of just 50 million (countries of roughly the same size include Myanmar 48.7m, Spain 46.1m, South Africa 50.6m and Colombia 46.7m) it has punched way above its weight in terms of business, technology and innovation. There are so many Korean brands which are internationally successful: Samsung, Ssangyong, Hyundai, Lotte, LG, Hanjin, Daewoo just to name a few. No one can deny the might of the Korean economic miracle and these are Korean industries driven by Korean brains bred from the best Korean universities. So why is SNU ranked just #37 in the QS ranking and way down at #124 on the Times ranking? I suspect the language barrier has worked against SNU for these people are not giving non-English speaking universities a fair evaluation. I could say the same thing about the best Japanese universities as well - and again, I feel they are not ranked as high as they deserve in these international rankings.
These international rankings have got to be taken with a pinch of salt - for it is hard to compare very different systems fairly. What an undergraduate experiences at Harvard or Oxford is going to be so different from his counterpart at SNU or the University of Tokyo. It's like trying to judge a cooking contest when you are presented with a French lobster Thermidor vs a dish of beautifully prepared lobster sushi and you have to decide which is better. Both dishes are delicious but are different in so many ways - how do you judge which is better?

It boils down to whether you prefer your lobster prepared the French way or the Japanese way. You can express a preference of one over the other - but that is not the same as saying one is better than the other. It is a lot easier for you to judge and compare two dishes of sushi prepared by two different chefs, then you can compare and contrast which sushi dish is better.
Ooh lobster sushi. Delicious!

Therefore, what you need to do is this: look at the university systems around the world and firstly decide what language you want to do your degree in (presumably English in your case). Then you need to compare the different systems in the English language (Singaporean, US, UK, Oz, Canada, NZ, Irish etc) then decide which system suits you best. It is really only at that stage that you can then look at the domestic list of the best universities within that country and really only then, would the ranking list make more sense.  So if you have decided you want to be educated in the UK (rather than in America), then you can effectively ignore these global rankings and just focus on the British ranking system here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/universityguide Please remember to look at both overall rankings and ranking by departments. In any case, all the British universities you have listed are all very good.

I hope this helps. As usual, feel free to leave a comment if you disagree with me or if you have any further questions. Thanks everyone. This is part 9 of my university season - for the first 8 parts, you can find a summary here: http://limpehft.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/summary-page-of-2012-themes.html

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11 comments:

  1. Unknown25 September 2012 at 12:48

    Just adding this since your article didn't seem to cover it: You need to look at how the universities are ranked in each system.

    As an example, the Times university ranking according to their website (http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-university-rankings/)
    ranks universities based on these criteria:


    1. Teaching — the learning environment (worth 30 per cent of the overall ranking score)
    2. Research — volume, income and reputation (worth 30 per cent)
    3. Citations — research influence (worth 30 per cent)
    4. Industry income — innovation (worth 2.5 per cent)
    5. International outlook — staff, students and research (worth 7.5 per cent).

    Points 2,3, and 5 all relate to research, making up ~67.5% (which is hefty!).
    My guess is that US universities put out a lot more research papers than those in the UK, which is why they're ranked a lot higher.
    My advice to Lee would be not to look solely at university rankings/research output as an indication of how 'good' the university is.

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    1. Limpeh Foreign Talent25 September 2012 at 13:01

      Thanks for this - very valid points indeed. I am just wondering, in terms of a Korean or Japanese university, would their research papers slip under the radar if they were published only in Korean/Japanese and not translated into English? Could that account for the lower than expected rankings of the JP/KR universities?

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    2. Unknown25 September 2012 at 15:09

      I expect this is so, since the research component of the ranking probably places more emphasis on international journals of good repute, more likely than not English-only, since the language of the research world is English (historically due to US/UK influence). You can't send a foreign-language paper for publication in an English-language journal, the editors can't read it to see whether it's saying nonsense or it's pure gold.

      However, I've seen papers regularly published in English by Japanese researchers who've conducted research in Japan on Japanese subjects, which would then count towards the ranking...

      I don't think language is as much of a barrier as its perceived to be because many good researchers are bi/multi-lingual and are often flying off to promote their papers at international conferences where they have to speak English to get their point across + lobby for funding.

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    3. Limpeh Foreign Talent25 September 2012 at 18:12

      Hmmm. I guess all it takes is to get a colleague to help you translate your work into English if you intend to publish it and let the work see your research, but I guess that's not always easy if there is a lot of technical jargon involved. I would hope that the university would then step in and pay some undergrad from the English lang department to help their more technical students translate their work into English - no?

      I've a friend who's worked in Japan (in IT) and he said that the IT geeks in Japan are brilliant at what they do but they tend not to be the ones who are good in English - in fact, some didn't even speak any English with him. The fact is in somewhere like Korea or Japan, you can become an expert in your field with little or no English.

      Anyway, I recall my time at a French university when so much of our research was done in English (much to my delight) as the books we had to get the material from were all in English and there were plenty of books in English in the library - LOL. But of course, when we presented our work, it had to be in French, not English.

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  2. Glenn25 September 2012 at 18:25

    My hypothesis is that this has to do with what subjects each university offers.

    LSE - mainly social sciences/humanities (with some finance)
    UCL - everything

    I think that the hard sciences/mathematics probably publish more frequently, or publish papers with more references (especially to papers by contemporary faculty), or some combination of both. This skews the research-focused rankings in UCL's favor.

    Oh and...

    U-CL, CL...
    Whatever will be, will be.
    You'll never be LSE.
    U-CL, CL. ..

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    1. Limpeh Foreign Talent25 September 2012 at 18:31

      Do I sense some UCL vs LSE competition here? LOL.

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    2. Glenn25 September 2012 at 18:41

      Ha yes. Someone who has the time could probably compare the Guardian vs. International rankings of other humanities-focused universities to see if the subject focus indeed causes a discrepancy in ranking. Unfortunately I can't think of too many humanities-focused universities besides LSE, SOAS and Sciences Po.

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  3. Anonymous26 September 2012 at 16:48

    Hey guys, sadly, i have got AAB/A for my projected grades :( B is my econs.
    Should i still try for the good schools, like LSE,Saint Andrews, Edinburgh, UCL? or should i play safe and try for the lower tier ones?
    Just to add, i know my recommendation letter from my history teacher is very good, and i topped the cohort for history, and my cca won the national competition. but i am still worried caz it seems that UK cared ALOT about your academics and as SG do not have A* programme, i guess we are a little at the disadvantage even if you excel in one subject... so whats your take on this ? pls help!

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    1. Limpeh Foreign Talent26 September 2012 at 18:20

      Alamak, these are PROJECTED grades, not actual grades, so kanchiong for what lah. Of course you should try for the good schools because these are decent predictions. Quite frankly, if the teacher says AAB - it can be far more credible than AAA. If I see a prediction of AAA, I would be like, I'll take it with a pinch of salt as this teacher is just trying to big up the student and help the student and I'm not convinced if this AAA will materialized; whereas if I see AAB, I'll be like aha, there's a teacher I can trust.

      AAB should give you a fair shot at any of the colleges you have listed - you're more than likely to get offers from most (if not ALL) of them IMHO. In any case, there is the scandal in the UK recently about grade inflation, like every tom dick and harry is getting straight As so the universities have no freaking clue who's really smart and who's just exam smart and they recently tried to impose stricter standards of marking and everyone is going cow beh cow bu ... So I beg to differ my friend, yes the grades do count but the Brits do look at the whole picture you know? And if you are to read history, then a B for econs ... well, how relevant is that?

      Did you do an S paper for history or was that something only for older folks like myself?

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    2. Limpeh Foreign Talent26 September 2012 at 20:17

      There you go: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-north-east-wales-19718438 AAB and she got herself a place in OXFORD.

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    3. Anonymous27 September 2012 at 15:27

      No i did not take H3 history :(
      My school does not offer one sadly.
      Shall apply, but haiz as usual $$ is the problem hahaha
      Hope Brits/SGreans are generous with scholarships to foreigners

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