My OperaRussia Moves to Improve Its University Rankings
Monday, April 22, 2013 6:16:18 AM
Russia Moves to Improve Its University Rankings
By SOPHIA KISHKOVSKY
Published: March 25, 2012
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MOSCOW — After it was reported this month that not a single Russian university had cracked The Times Higher Education’s ranking of top 100 schools by academic reputation , Education Minister Andrei Fursenko said that Russia was in the process of creating its own rating system.
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A brain drain from Russia has been funneling its brightest minds to the West, while the nation’s embattled higher education system struggles to find its place in the post-Soviet world. Each new rating announcement sets off hand-wringing about the predominance of the United States and the rise of China, both sore points and models for Russia.
“Russia has had some internal debate about their academic community,” Phil Baty, the editor of the Times Higher Education rankings, said by telephone from London. “They have suffered from appalling brain drain, and there is also concern that their scholastic community is isolated.
“There are some schools that are extremely impressive, but it is also struggling, and it’s all down to resources,” Mr. Baty added.
Dr. Fursenko told the Interfax news agency that ratings were an “instrument of competitive battle and influence” and should not be monopolized. He said that Russia was working with international specialists to create its own “international and universally recognized” university rating, Interfax reported this month.
Two days earlier, the Kremlin chief of staff, Sergei Ivanov, said Russia should create its own corruption rating.
The Times’s reputation rankings are based on responses by more than 17,000 academics, chosen in part according to Unesco data on the geographic spread of professors around the world.
As early as February 2011, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin was calling on Dr. Fursenko and his ministry to work out its own ranking of foreign universities.
“You must know that certain experts think that these Western ratings are, in fact, an instrument for raising their competitiveness on the labor market,” Mr. Putin said at their meeting, where they discussed a law that would recognize foreign university diplomas in Russia. “That’s why we need to be very cautious about them, and work out our own objective method of evaluating the quality of education that graduates of these universities receive.”
Last August, Mr. Putin promised 70 billion rubles, or $2.38 billion, for higher education innovation in Russia over the next five years.
Dr. Fursenko told Interfax that he would investigate why Russia had fallen on the Times Higher Education lists. Lomonosov Moscow State University, which is known for its mathematics and physical sciences programs, had been ranked 33rd by the Times last year, the first year it compiled a reputation ranking. Only two Russian universities — Moscow State and Saint Petersburg State University — made it onto The Times’s regular Top 400 ranking, placing in the 276-300 and 351-400 bands.
Russians take any blow against Moscow State very personally. It was founded in the 18th century by Mikhail Lomonosov, who is regarded as a Russian Leonardo da Vinci. The Stalin-era skyscraper that serves as its main building is one of the Russian capital’s landmarks, visible for kilometers around, and the vast university serves the function of Harvard, Oxford and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology all rolled into one.
Viktor Sadovnichy, the rector of Moscow State, told Nezavisimaya Gazeta, a Moscow newspaper, that the university had suffered in the rankings because the quality of research at universities was weighted over teaching, but that such a year-on-year drop was too precipitous.
It was most likely set off, he said, by respondents being asked a new set of questions. Mr. Sadovnichy told the newspaper that the only question mentioned in the methodology described on The Times Higher Education’s Web site is “Which university would you send your most talented graduates to for the best postgraduate supervision?” which places Russian universities at an immediate disadvantage since there is no official “postgraduate” category in Russia.
In 2009, the Russian government designated a group of research universities for an influx of funds and development, something that China did years ago, said Martin Gilman, who was director of the International Monetary Fund’s Moscow office in the 1990s and has been director of the Higher School of Economics’ Center for Advanced Studies since 2006.
The Higher School of Economics, one of the designated research universities and widely regarded as Russia’s most Western-style school, has lured 25 new faculty from the international academic job market — both overseas Russians and foreign-born nationals — with the promise of research opportunities and a smaller teaching burden than they would most likely encounter in the United States.
New hires are offered tenure-track positions and the resources to publish and to travel to conferences, which, in turn, raises the university’s international profile, said Dr. Gilman.
The university has been transitioning to teaching and publishing in English, as well as introducing practices like blind peer-reviewed publications that are not yet the norm in Russia.
“We know that this is not going to have big payoffs in the short term in terms of international rankings, but we are hopeful that given our strategy of 2020” — by which time H.S.E. aims to be a world-class research university — “that over the longer term, this will be a much more solid basis in creating the kind of critical mass of faculty in certain disciplines,” Dr. Gilman said.
Russia has been faced with revamping its primary and secondary education systems as well in the wake of the collapse of Communism. The introduction of a standardized college entrance exam similar to the SAT in the United States, has been controversial, but is an important step to introducing national standards in Russia, Dr. Gilman said. On the university level, the social sciences were devastated during the Soviet era and are being built virtually from scratch.
“Those involved in higher education have a formidable challenge in this country because the dead weight of the past is enormous,” Dr. Gilman said.
Yefim Pivovar, rector of the Russian State University for the Humanities, one of the most prestigious liberal arts universities, known as R.G.G.U., said that Russian universities were still far behind in physical infrastructure, which, he said, also affected rankings.
He said that R.G.G.U. had been exchanging students with Laval University in Canada for 20 years.
“They have kilometers of underground passageways between buildings,” he said. “We don’t have a single university with such passageways. I’m talking about the material base. I think they have seven rinks for Canadian hockey. That’s what we need to be doing. It’s not a question of ratings, but of the quality of our material base,” he said.
Dr. Pivovar said that Russia could not ignore rankings, but that R.G.G.U.’s 200 exchanges and agreements with schools like the University of California, Berkeley, and the universities of Bochum and Freiburg in Germany also proved its connection to international academia.
Joyce Hor-Chung Lau contributed reporting.
A version of this article appeared in print on March 26, 2012, in The International Herald Tribune.
By SOPHIA KISHKOVSKY
Published: March 25, 2012
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MOSCOW — After it was reported this month that not a single Russian university had cracked The Times Higher Education’s ranking of top 100 schools by academic reputation , Education Minister Andrei Fursenko said that Russia was in the process of creating its own rating system.
Related
Oxford's New School of Government (March 26, 2012)
Connect With Us on Twitter
Follow @nytimesworld for international breaking news and headlines.
Twitter List: Reporters and Editors
A brain drain from Russia has been funneling its brightest minds to the West, while the nation’s embattled higher education system struggles to find its place in the post-Soviet world. Each new rating announcement sets off hand-wringing about the predominance of the United States and the rise of China, both sore points and models for Russia.
“Russia has had some internal debate about their academic community,” Phil Baty, the editor of the Times Higher Education rankings, said by telephone from London. “They have suffered from appalling brain drain, and there is also concern that their scholastic community is isolated.
“There are some schools that are extremely impressive, but it is also struggling, and it’s all down to resources,” Mr. Baty added.
Dr. Fursenko told the Interfax news agency that ratings were an “instrument of competitive battle and influence” and should not be monopolized. He said that Russia was working with international specialists to create its own “international and universally recognized” university rating, Interfax reported this month.
Two days earlier, the Kremlin chief of staff, Sergei Ivanov, said Russia should create its own corruption rating.
The Times’s reputation rankings are based on responses by more than 17,000 academics, chosen in part according to Unesco data on the geographic spread of professors around the world.
As early as February 2011, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin was calling on Dr. Fursenko and his ministry to work out its own ranking of foreign universities.
“You must know that certain experts think that these Western ratings are, in fact, an instrument for raising their competitiveness on the labor market,” Mr. Putin said at their meeting, where they discussed a law that would recognize foreign university diplomas in Russia. “That’s why we need to be very cautious about them, and work out our own objective method of evaluating the quality of education that graduates of these universities receive.”
Last August, Mr. Putin promised 70 billion rubles, or $2.38 billion, for higher education innovation in Russia over the next five years.
Dr. Fursenko told Interfax that he would investigate why Russia had fallen on the Times Higher Education lists. Lomonosov Moscow State University, which is known for its mathematics and physical sciences programs, had been ranked 33rd by the Times last year, the first year it compiled a reputation ranking. Only two Russian universities — Moscow State and Saint Petersburg State University — made it onto The Times’s regular Top 400 ranking, placing in the 276-300 and 351-400 bands.
Russians take any blow against Moscow State very personally. It was founded in the 18th century by Mikhail Lomonosov, who is regarded as a Russian Leonardo da Vinci. The Stalin-era skyscraper that serves as its main building is one of the Russian capital’s landmarks, visible for kilometers around, and the vast university serves the function of Harvard, Oxford and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology all rolled into one.
Viktor Sadovnichy, the rector of Moscow State, told Nezavisimaya Gazeta, a Moscow newspaper, that the university had suffered in the rankings because the quality of research at universities was weighted over teaching, but that such a year-on-year drop was too precipitous.
It was most likely set off, he said, by respondents being asked a new set of questions. Mr. Sadovnichy told the newspaper that the only question mentioned in the methodology described on The Times Higher Education’s Web site is “Which university would you send your most talented graduates to for the best postgraduate supervision?” which places Russian universities at an immediate disadvantage since there is no official “postgraduate” category in Russia.
In 2009, the Russian government designated a group of research universities for an influx of funds and development, something that China did years ago, said Martin Gilman, who was director of the International Monetary Fund’s Moscow office in the 1990s and has been director of the Higher School of Economics’ Center for Advanced Studies since 2006.
The Higher School of Economics, one of the designated research universities and widely regarded as Russia’s most Western-style school, has lured 25 new faculty from the international academic job market — both overseas Russians and foreign-born nationals — with the promise of research opportunities and a smaller teaching burden than they would most likely encounter in the United States.
New hires are offered tenure-track positions and the resources to publish and to travel to conferences, which, in turn, raises the university’s international profile, said Dr. Gilman.
The university has been transitioning to teaching and publishing in English, as well as introducing practices like blind peer-reviewed publications that are not yet the norm in Russia.
“We know that this is not going to have big payoffs in the short term in terms of international rankings, but we are hopeful that given our strategy of 2020” — by which time H.S.E. aims to be a world-class research university — “that over the longer term, this will be a much more solid basis in creating the kind of critical mass of faculty in certain disciplines,” Dr. Gilman said.
Russia has been faced with revamping its primary and secondary education systems as well in the wake of the collapse of Communism. The introduction of a standardized college entrance exam similar to the SAT in the United States, has been controversial, but is an important step to introducing national standards in Russia, Dr. Gilman said. On the university level, the social sciences were devastated during the Soviet era and are being built virtually from scratch.
“Those involved in higher education have a formidable challenge in this country because the dead weight of the past is enormous,” Dr. Gilman said.
Yefim Pivovar, rector of the Russian State University for the Humanities, one of the most prestigious liberal arts universities, known as R.G.G.U., said that Russian universities were still far behind in physical infrastructure, which, he said, also affected rankings.
He said that R.G.G.U. had been exchanging students with Laval University in Canada for 20 years.
“They have kilometers of underground passageways between buildings,” he said. “We don’t have a single university with such passageways. I’m talking about the material base. I think they have seven rinks for Canadian hockey. That’s what we need to be doing. It’s not a question of ratings, but of the quality of our material base,” he said.
Dr. Pivovar said that Russia could not ignore rankings, but that R.G.G.U.’s 200 exchanges and agreements with schools like the University of California, Berkeley, and the universities of Bochum and Freiburg in Germany also proved its connection to international academia.
Joyce Hor-Chung Lau contributed reporting.
A version of this article appeared in print on March 26, 2012, in The International Herald Tribune.
Minhcineenebo # Monday, April 22, 2013 6:18:37 AM
Minhcineenebo # Monday, April 22, 2013 6:19:04 AM
AUSTRALIAN universities have improved their international standing in the past year and now enjoy the third highest ranked reputation in the world.
The Times Higher Education World Reputation Rankings, to be released today, found Australian now lags only behind the US and UK, with six of our universities ranked in the Top 100.
In the past year, Australian universities outperformed the Netherlands, Japan and Germany, with two new entrants on the list - Monash University in Victoria, and the University of NSW - joining the four existing place holders.
The University of Melbourne improved its rank from 43 to 39 and Australian National University from 44 to 42. Sydney University rose one place to 49, and University of Queensland remained in the 80th percentile.
Times Higher Education editor Phil Baty said the reputation rankings have been held since 2011 and Australia has improved its standing at each survey.
The results are based on a global opinion poll and take into account more than 16,000 responses from senior published academics in 150 countries.
"Australia is a country very much on the way up in terms of worldwide academic prestige," Mr Baty said in a statement.
"In many ways these results show that Australia's image among scholars around the world is catching up with the reality: until now it has tended to perform less well in the reputation rankings compared with the overall, objective World University Rankings.
"These results show how well poised Australia is to make the most of its geographical advantages: while it has strong links with the best universities in the West, it has also made the most of East Asia's booming higher education scene. If it continues to exploit these opportunities, Australia could be a serious beneficiary of the Asian century, which is great news for its economy and competitiveness."
Monash University president Ed Byrne said in a statement: "Australia is ideally situation between the rising academic powerhouses of Asia and established centres in the old Westticipate a bright future."
UNSW Vice Chancellor, Professor Fred Hilmer, put the institution's first-time inclusion down to a "very strong improvement path".
"When you look at the quality of the student intake, it's gone up every year. It's harder and harder to get in and if you look at research in particular, we are winning increasingly competitive grants," Professor Hilmer said.
Universities in the US and UK still hold the bulk of the top 100 positions, (43 in the US and nine in the UK) with an elite group of six "super-brands" including Harvard, Oxford and Cambridge, holding the top positions since the rankings' inception.
The highest ranking university outside of the US and UK is the University of Tokyo at 9th, while India and New Zealand are among the countries with no entrants on the Top 100 list. China's two most prestigious universities, Tsinghua University and Peking University, both dropped slightly in the rankings, but they remain in the Top 50.
Read more: http://www.news.com.au/national-news/australian-universities-improve-world-standing/story-fncynjr2-1226590402495#ixzz2RAd2NCb7