IREG events in 2021 – Conference in Jeddah and Seminar in Budapest
The Executive Committee of IREG Observatory on Academic Ranking and Excellence at its March 4th meeting announced two major events in 2021.
Social Divide in US Higher Education Widens
An article in the New York Times by Amelia Nierenberg indicates that the current virus crisis has opened up a massive gulf between elite universities in the USA and less prestigious institutions lower down the global and national rankings. Cornell University, a member of the Ivy League, has seen an unprecedented rise in applications, encouraged […]
Good News for Free Speech in US Colleges
There has been much discussion around the world about academic freedom and free speech on campus. There have been suggestions that academic freedom should be incorporated into rankings. The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) has been particularly concerned with issues of individual freedom in American higher education including campus speech codes, discrimination against […]
Article Charts the Spread of Predatory Publishing
Predatory publishing has become a serious menace to research quality in the last few years. The situation has been made worse by universities’ perceived need to boost the number of their publications and citations in order to perform well in the global rankings. An article by Vit Macháček and Martin Srholec of CERGE-EI (Charles University […]
Huge Increase in Japanese Research Funding
Japanese research has been stagnant over the last few years and the country’s leading research universities have been pushed aside by the rising stars of Mainland China. The situation has been attributed, at least in part, to a lack of adequate research funding. In 2006-09 Japan’s flagship University of Tokyo was ranked 4th in the […]
INSEAD Leads FT Global MBA Rankings
The latest edition of the Financial Times (FT) Global MBA rankings has just been published. It is noteworthy for the absence of several elite American business schools, including Stanford, Harvard and the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, because of disruption caused by the pandemic crisis. The number of absentees is, however, less than […]
Website Exposes US Disparities in Education
The website, Intelligent, has published a report comparing the performance of American states in various metrics. The best performing states (including the District of Columbia) are mainly on the East Coast and in the Mid-West while those who do less well tend to be in the South. The top five states overall (combining academic performance, […]
Stanford Beats Harvard for Top Place in New Composite Ranking
AppliedHE, a Singapore based higher education website, has just published the first edition of Rankometer, a composition system that combines the results of five well known global rankings. Conditions for inclusion in Rankometer were publication in the previous year, ranking of at least 1,000 universities, and being in the top five for Google News hits. […]
University of Washington Leads Webometrics Ranking
The Ranking Web of Universities (or Webometrics) is one of the oldest of the current global rankings and the most comprehensive, now ranking over 30,000 institutions. It measures web activity and research output. There are three indicators this year compared to the usual four as the PRESENCE indicator has been discontinued. The other three indicators […]
US News Publishes Biggest Online Rankings
The current pandemic crisis has created massive interest in online teaching and learning. The US News ranking of online programs, which is now in its tenth year of publication, is therefore essential reading for students and other stakeholders. The newspaper has just announced its latest ranking of online programs. There are tables for bachelor’s degrees […]