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MIT overtakes Cambridge and Harvard to top spot in QS world university rankings

topuniversities.com

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Re: MIT overtakes Cambridge and Harvard to top spot in QS world university rankings

#21

Post by ilamont »

In the 2010 Times Higher Education "top universities" list, Alexandria University in Egypt ranked ahead of Georgetown and Delft. It also beat out Harvard and Stanford in the subcategory that measured the impact of research (1). Here's what happened:

Phil Baty, deputy editor of Times Higher Education, acknowledged that Alexandria’s surprising prominence was actually due to “the high output from one scholar in one journal” — soon identified on various blogs as Mohamed El Naschie, an Egyptian academic who published over 320 of his own articles in a scientific journal of which he was also the editor.

In 2009, an administrator at Clemson University in the U.S. revealed that the college had "... manipulated class sizes, artificially boosted faculty salary data and gave rival schools low grades in the rankings' peer reputation survey" with the goal of improving its U.S. News & World Report college ranking. This helped the university rise from #38 to #22 over a seven-year period (2). A few weeks ago, Emory University admitted it had also manipulated data/lied over a period of more than 10 years in order to improve its U.S. News & World Report ranking (3).

My takeaway from these incidents: Not only are university ranking systems imperfect to begin with, but it's also possible to game the system ... and it happens every year.

1. New York Times: "Questionable Science Behind Academic Rankings" http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/15/education/15iht-educLede15...

2. USA Today: "Clemson official: School manipulated rankings " http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2009-06-04-clemson-ra...

3. Reuters: "Emory gave incorrect data to publications that rank U.S. colleges" in.reuters.com/article/2012/08/17/usa-emory-ranking-idINL2E8JHNG320120817

Re: MIT overtakes Cambridge and Harvard to top spot in QS world university rankings

#22

Post by [deleted] »

cygwin98 wrote: post #15

I find the rankings from ARWU (a Shanghai-based institute) makes more sense. http://www.shanghairanking.com/ARWU2012.html The Top ten universities listed there are 1 Harvard University 2 Stanford University 3 Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) 4 University of California, Berkeley 5 University of Cambridge 6 California Institute of Technology 7 Princeton University 8 Columbia University 9 University of Chicag…

[deleted]

Re: MIT overtakes Cambridge and Harvard to top spot in QS world university rankings

#23

Post by cygwin98 »

arethuza wrote: post #17
cygwin98 wrote: post #15

I find the rankings from ARWU (a Shanghai-based institute) makes more sense. http://www.shanghairanking.com/ARWU2012.html The Top ten universities listed there are 1 Harvard University 2 Stanford University 3 Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) 4 University of California, Berkeley 5 University of Cambridge 6 California Institute of Technology 7 Princeton University 8 Columbia University 9 University of Chicag…

Why does that make more sense? It's just different and equally as arbitrary a set of ranking criteria as the original article.

All ranks are biased. But I don't think four universities from UK can make into top 10. Cambridge and Oxford maybe, the other two not so much. Regarding the rankings from ARWU, I think Berkeley and Columbia is a bit too high on the list.

Re: MIT overtakes Cambridge and Harvard to top spot in QS world university rankings

#24

Post by learc83 »

CJefferson wrote: post #12

Interesting how the UK manages to take 4 out of the top 6 places (yes, choosing 6 places does put the UK in the best light).

As long as prestige factors heavily, Cambridge and Oxford are almost always going to be in the top 10; they're both almost 1000 years old.

Re: MIT overtakes Cambridge and Harvard to top spot in QS world university rankings

#26

Post by learc83 »

lmm wrote: post #13
f055 wrote: post #4

More interestingly, Oxford overtook Cambridge in Computer Science :P

I loved Cambridge but honestly the Computer Science course was pretty poor. It won't have helped that the best first-year lecturer, Arthur Norman, retired recently.

From what I've seen watching British TV, I gather Cambridge and Oxford are divided into semi-autonomous colleges.

Do you share lecturers among colleges, or is there one college that all computer science majors attend?

Re: MIT overtakes Cambridge and Harvard to top spot in QS world university rankings

#28

Post by petermk »

learc83 wrote: post #26
lmm wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I loved Cambridge but honestly the Computer Science course was pretty poor. It won't have helped that the best first-year lecturer, Arthur Norman, retired recently.

From what I've seen watching British TV, I gather Cambridge and Oxford are divided into semi-autonomous colleges. Do you share lecturers among colleges, or is there one college that all computer science majors attend?

In my college there were four computer scientists in my year. We had two lecturers in the college, who gave us tutorials. Then we join the rest of the computer scientists throughout the University for lectures.

And the colleges are more than semi-automonus - they have their own academics, own money, and they do their own admissions.

Re: MIT overtakes Cambridge and Harvard to top spot in QS world university rankings

#29

Post by rdl »

arctangent wrote: post #9

I can't comment on the methodology used to rank the universities, but I think it's interesting that a specialised (as opposed to "fully comprehensive") university has come out on top. MIT would probably not be a great choice of university for someone looking to take an arts degree :-)

While it's certainly not their focus, MIT does have some surprisingly good humanities programs.

Re: MIT overtakes Cambridge and Harvard to top spot in QS world university rankings

#30

Post by archangel_one »

yurylifshits wrote: post #7

Can't take it serious when Stanford is only #15

Isn't that a bit partisan? There are some big names above it (Cambridge, Harvard, Oxford, Yale, ...) - coming behind some of those doesn't make it a bad university.
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