Science issue: Tackling the university challenge

Students rely heavily on university rankings when choosing where to study – but the lists don’t tell the whole story, especially in this part of the world. We look at how ratings are calculated, how UAE universities compare internationally, and gets expert advice about what to look for before making a decision.

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Like beauty queens nervously nibbling their perfectly manicured nails as the judges tot up their final marks, university administrators worldwide are anxiously awaiting the publication of the latest Times Higher Education World University Rankings on September 30.

Likewise, millions of would-be students around the world will be watching for the list. Choosing a university is one of the most important – and expensive – decisions a young person can make and picking the right one is to pocket a golden key that can help to open doors throughout a career.

Such lists and guides ought to make that decision easier, and increasingly so in the Arab world, a region to which the world’s leading publishers of rankings are increasingly turning their attention.

But with complex and frequently incompatible methodologies, one almost needs a degree in statistical analysis to work out what the competing rankings are really telling us.

At first glance, it appears so simple. In the current Times world rankings, for example, the top 10 slots are occupied by the usual suspects – California Institute of Technology, Harvard, Oxford, Stanford, Cambridge, MIT, Princeton, Berkeley, Yale and Imperial College London.

The same names crop up, in slightly different order, in the world rankings produced by London education services company QS, the Centre for World University Rankings (CWUR) in Jeddah and the Academic Ranking of World Universities in Shanghai.

Job done, then – go to one of these institutions and you’ll be set up for life.

Perhaps. But not everybody can afford to study abroad, let alone at Oxford or Harvard, or wants to pursue the subjects at which these universities excel. And, of course, places are limited and competition can be fierce.

Alice Bell, a former research fellow with the Science Policy Research Unit at the UK’s University of Sussex, advises parents and students not to fall into “the rankings trap”. There is, she says, no substitute for meeting and interviewing academic staff.

“You need to talk to the people you are going to be giving your money to, to get a sense of whether you’re going to have a good working relationship,” she says.

Ben Sowter, head of the QS Intelligence Unit, agrees that students should regard rankings as just one element of the research they need to do.

“We repeatedly make that point,” he says. “The overall rankings is a broad-brush exercise. We’re casting a light on excellence by selecting things that are measurable, but by no means does any ranking, ours or anybody else’s, cover all aspects of what universities are responsible for.”

The UAE is a case in point. Six UAE institutions feature in the latest QS world rankings. They are led by United Arab Emirates University, which this year rose more than 40 places to 385th place, followed closely by the American University of Sharjah in 390th. UAEU is consistently the highest-ranked of all UAE institutions listed in the major rankings.

“One of the problems that besets all rankings is that 385 doesn’t sound very good,” says Sowter, whose signature appears on the certificate proudly displayed on the UAEU website.

“But the reality is that there are 20,000 universities in the world, so for a relatively young ­institution in a relatively young knowledge economy to be in the top two per cent is a terrific achievement.”

The UAE’s institutions, he says, are “beginning to make a notable regional impact and perhaps stepping forward into being more of a globally noticeable influencer in academic terms”. Rankings are good for everyone, he adds, because they inspire universities to raise their game.

“They cast a great deal of light on the quality debate and generate a great deal of attention and discussion about how universities can improve in themselves and improve in their provision to society,” he says.

Different rankings are tricky to compare, because they use different indicators and methods. Some indicators are simple and objective, while others are complex and difficult to apply evenly across different countries and universities, let alone subject areas.

Take the methodology behind the world rankings compiled by QS since 2004. This gathers data from six indicators, each worth a proportion of a possible 100 per cent score. But the greatest weight, 50 per cent, is given to two categories based on arguably subjective surveys.

“Academic reputation”, derived from a three-year global survey of more than 63,000 academics, is worth 40 per cent, and “employer reputation”, worth 10 per cent, relies on the responses of 28,000 employers asked to identify the universities they believe produce the best graduates.

The other four measures are quantifiable: “faculty-student ratio”, seen as an indication of commitment to teaching and worth 20 per cent of the overall score; “citations for each ­facility”, a measure of research impact (20 per cent); and the ratios of international students and staff, which are indicators of diversity and each worth 5 per cent.

Exploring the detail hidden in the data, in other words, can reveal more about a university than its overall position in the league table.

It’s also important to be aware that rankings are “very rarely measuring anything to do with teaching”, says Professor James Wilsdon, who recently chaired a review of the role of metrics in assessing research for the UK government’s Higher Education Funding Council for England. Degree-class results, for example, are conspicuous by their absence in all of the major tables, in which “most of the metrics are research-based”.

The assumption, says ­ Wilsdon, of the science and democracy department at the ­University of Sussex is that “if they’re good research ­universities, they’ll be good teaching universities – but a lot of very good researchers don’t want to do any teaching or aren’t very good at it”.

Confusingly, for the institutions and the students, different rankings can tell different stories. Unlike QS, the Times global ranking fails to list any UAE ­universities.

Times looks at the world slightly differently, through the lens of 13 indicators in five areas. These are: "teaching", an assessment of quality based on five measures including a reputation survey of 10,000 academics and the ­doctorate-to-bachelor's ratio (worth 30 per cent); "research", measuring volume, income and reputation (30 per cent); "citations", a reflection of the influence of research (30 per cent), "industry income", a measure of innovation (2.5 per cent) and "International outlook", measured in diversity of staff, students and research (7.5 per cent).

Likewise, there are no UAE institutions listed in the well-­regarded Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU), compiled by the Centre for World-Class Universities at Shanghai Jiao Tong University. Saudi Arabia, which has 10 universities ranked, is the only ­Middle East country featured in the list.

But global attention is turning increasingly to universities throughout the region, where much investment is being pumped into developing the higher-education sector, and bespoke rankings are being developed for the region.

Times has announced plans to publish regional rankings from the Middle East and North Africa, and in February released a top-30 "snapshot" preview. It was a limited assessment, based solely on the number of citations generated by an institution's publications between 2009 and 2013, compared with the average for the subject field. The UAE had three institutions in the top 30 – once again, UAEU did well (ranked 11th, with a score of 69.68 out of a possible 100), followed by the AUS (17th, with 61.53) and the Petroleum Institute Abu Dhabi (20th, with 60.44).

Phil Baty, editor of The Times World University Rankings, said the top 30 offered a "fascinating insight into the research strengths of the Mena region" but was still only "a snapshot to stimulate wider discussions about the most appropriate metrics for ranking the region's ­universities".

QS is ahead of them, applying the methodology of its world rankings to produce a league table for the Arab region for the first time last year. In June, the ranking expanded from 50 to 100 institutions from 15 countries.

The QS regional ranking is based on nine indicators, covering academic and employer reputation, faculty-student ratio, web impact, proportion of staff with a PhD, research productivity and impact, and proportions of international faculty and students. The UAE features strongly, with nine of its 13 listed institutions in the top 50 and two in the top 10: UAEU (6th, with 88.6 points) and the AUS (7th, 86.1 points).

There has, says Sowter, been “a gradual blossoming of interest from universities in the region, in both their standing in international rankings but also in self-analysis – trying to understand what they’re good at and bad at, and what they need to improve and reinforce to be ­increasingly competitive ­internationally”.

Professor Mohammed Albaili, deputy vice chancellor for academic affairs at UAEU, agrees.

UAEU’s QS regional ranking was not regarded as an isolated accomplishment, he said when the results were announced in June, but “rather as a new step on the way of excellence and leadership”.

How they compare

QS World University Rankings

1. Massachusetts Institute of Technology

2. University of Cambridge

2. Imperial College London

4. Harvard University

5. University of Oxford

5. University College London

385. United Arab Emirates University

390. American University of Sharjah

441-450. Khalifa University

551-600. University of Sharjah

601-650. American University in Dubai

651-700. Abu Dhabi University

QS University Rankings Arab Region

1. King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals

2. American University of Beirut

3. King Saud University

4. King Abdulaziz University

5. The American University in Cairo

6. United Arab Emirates University

7. American University of Sharjah

19. American University in Dubai

21. University of Sharjah

22. Zayed University

24. Khalifa University

27. Abu Dhabi University

36. Higher Colleges of Technology

46. University of Dubai

Times Higher Education World University Rankings

1. California Institute of Technology

2. Harvard University

3. University of Oxford

4. Stanford University

5. University of Cambridge

Times Higher Education MENA Top 30 Snapshot

1. Texas A&M University at Qatar

2. Lebanese American University

3. King Abdulaziz University

4. Qatar University

5. American University of Beirut

11. United Arab Emirates University

17. American University of Sharjah

20. Petroleum Institute Abu Dhabi

Academic Ranking of World Universities (Shanghai)

1. Harvard University

2. Stanford University

3. Massachusetts Institute of Technology

4. University of California- Berkeley

5. University of Cambridge

Center for World University Rankings (Jeddah)

1. Harvard University

2. Stanford University

3. Massachusetts Institute of Technology

4. University of Cambridge

5. University of Oxford

950. United Arab Emirates University

1001+. American University of Sharjah

– Petroleum Institute Abu Dhabi

– University of Sharjah

– Masdar Institute of Science and Technology

– Khalifa University

– NYU Abu Dhabi

artslife@thenational.ae