|
 February
17, 2006 - A major report
on international higher education,
released
today by the Educational Policy Institute
in its report A World of Difference:
A Global Comparison of University League
Tables, shows that while many countries
have tried to emulate US News and World
Report's attempt to rank universities,
the lack of agreement about what constitutes
"quality" in higher education has led
to a multiplicity of different - and
perhaps conflicting - standards in
league tables.
"It's a bit of a problem," said report
co-author Massimo Savino. "We know
that a lot of students who move from
one country
to another for higher education - particularly
those from China - are choosing institutions
based on these rankings. Yet they may
not be getting what they think they
are getting because the indicators
and their
evidentiary basis vary so much from
country to country." Other findings of this report include:
- The Shanghai Jiao Tong rankings,
often used as an international standard
by
august publications such as the
Economist, are in no way comparable
to North American
rankings systems such as US News
and World Report because they concentrate
exclusively on research-production
indicators
and make no attempt to evaluate
instructional quality. This is true
generally of Asian-based
ranking systems.
- North American rankings systems (US
News and World Report and Maclean's)
make the strongest attempt to look directly
at educational quality, but a lack
of independent data sources means that the
quality of the data they use is
suspect compared to other rankings systems.
- Most university "rankings" operate on
a "league table" basis, but an
analysis of "best practices" among 19 league tables
seems to show that, for the purpose
of helping students decide on an institution,
this is not a very useful approach.
Co-author
Alex Usher, Vice-President of the Educational
Policy Institute,
reserved special praise for the rankings
systems developed by the Center for
Higher Education Development and
published by Die Zeit. "The
German system of institutional ranking
is nothing short of brilliant,"
said Mr. Usher. "With the assistance
of all universities, it produces
high-quality comparative data at
the departmental
level. Moreover, it does not provide
a spurious "overall" ranking. Instead,
by making the data publicly available
on web-enabled database, it permits
each student to examine rank institutions
based on the criteria that matter
most to them, the student.
The Educational Policy Institute
(EPI) is a is a non-partisan, non-governmental
organization dedicated to policy-based
research on educational opportunity
for all students. With offices
in Virginia
Beach, VA, Toronto, ON, and Melbourne,
Australia, EPI is a collective
association of researchers and policy
analysts
from
around the world dedicated to the
mission of enhancing our knowledge
of critical
barriers facing students and families
throughout the educational pipeline.
In addition, EPI has developed
extensive partnerships and collaborative
arrangements
with other leading research and
educational organizations, further
supporting
our mission and ability to conduct
policy-relevant
research for practical use.
The mission of EPI is to expand educational
opportunity for low-income and other
historically-underrepresented students
through high-level research and analysis.
By providing educational leaders and
policymakers with the information required
to make prudent programmatic and policy
decisions, we believe that the doors
of opportunity can be further opened
for all students, resulting in an increase
in the number of students prepared for,
enrolled in, and completing postsecondary
education. Click
here for the full report.
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