Another Hit

If losing the number one ranking in NZ wasn't bad enough for University of Auckland (despite still getting a larger portion of the funding than any other university), they've slipped in the latest Times Higher Education World University Rankings, dropping from 46th to 50th! They're still well ahead of any other NZ university though, with University of Otago ranked one hundred and ... and University of Canterbury at one hundred and ...(they just aren't worth remembering ;) )

You may be asking, why waste time posting about a non-issue? Because Calum has too much time to waste! So he decided to waste a bit of that time on looking into these rankings create a beat-up over nothing.

Do they really mean anything? Well, for a start UoA is further down the list in the Shanghai Jiao Tong University "Academic Ranking of World Universities" where UoA is ranked somewhere between 203-304. This then causes some inconsistencies between the two ranking systems as you may notice that in the Times Higher Education rankings, UoA is ranked higher than Seoul National University (for want of a better example), but in the Shanghai Jiao Tong Univeristy rankings, Seoul National University is ranked higher than UoA! How absurd! So which university is really better? (of course that could well be subjective..)

If you look at the methodology of the two ranking systems though you could definitely question their validity. To determine the Times Higher Education rankings, a survey is sent out to thousands of lecturers and researchers etc asking them to rank the top thirty universities in their research field. With a response rate of 1%, there could be some degree of bias in there. The Shanghai Jiao Tong University rankings determines excellence by the number of Nobel and other award winning research. Many of the awards were gained by staff when they were at other institutions though, so it may give an indication of the ability of the university to attract top staff but it doesn't indicate the number of award-winning scientists/researchers etc. it can produce.

(If you seriously want more, here's the reference:
BioMed Central (2007, October 26). University Ranking Systems Seriously Flawed, Study Says. ScienceDaily. Retrieved November 8,)
---

Calum's Favourite The Young and the Restless Quotes for Today
(I swear I don't watch this regularly...only the beginning after the news!):

"I couldn't give a ffffffffflying............FIG about Brad!"

-

Dodgy man: "I understand you got loaned a sum of money"

Lady on treadmill: "Yeah...so what?"

Dodgy man: "Why'd you flush it down the toilet?"