The QS World University Rankings are a load of old baloney

The University of Cambridge is not the best university in the world.

By David Blanchflower Published 05 September 2011 17:21

The University of Cambridge is the best university in the world, according to the eighth annual QS World University Rankings for 2011/2012, out today. Oxford came fifth in the tables and there is a total of five UK universities in the top 20. What a load of old baloney.

Here are the rankings:

1. University of Cambridge
2. Harvard University
3. Massachusetts Institute of Technology
4. Yale University
5. University of Oxford
6. Imperial College London
7. UCL (University College London)
8. University of Chicago
9. University of Pennsylvania
10. Columbia University
11. Stanford University
12. California Institute of Technology
13. Princeton University
14. University of Michigan
15. Cornell University
16. Johns Hopkins University
17. McGill University
18. Swiss Federal Institute of Technology
19 Duke University
20 University of Edinburgh

This ranking is complete rubbish and nobody should place any credence in it. The results are based on an entirely flawed methodology that underweights the quality of research and overweights fluff:

40 per cent -- academic reputation from a global survey
10 per cent -- from employer reputation
20 per cent -- from citations by faculty
20 per cent -- from student faculty ratio
5 per cent -- proportion of foreign students
5 per cent -- proportion of foreign faculty

The methodology is designed to underweight the performance of US universities that tend not to have a high proportion of foreign students or foreign faculty members -- but who cares about that? It is unclear whether having more foreign students and faculty should even have a positive rank; less is probably better. So, the UK faculty all say they are wonderful, but that isn't a plausible measure of quality. Another way to improve the rankings of UK universities would be to replace the 20 per cent for citations with a 20 per cent weight to any university whose name started with the letters CAM or OXF; the ranking is that absurd. Or they could weight by the proportion of buildings on the campuses built before 1500.

A more realistic ranking is provided by the University of Shanghai, that ranks the quality and quantity of research output of its faculty as well as the receipt of Nobel Prizes and field medals by both its faculty and alumni heavily. The number of faculty members from Botswana and the number of students from Chile quite rightly have zero impact, which is as it should be. Here are the weights used in their much more believable methodology:

Criteria
Alumni of an institution winning Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals -- 10 per cent
Faculty of an institution winning Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals -- 20 per cent
Highly cited researchers in 21 broad subject categories -- 20 per cent
Research Output Papers published in Nature and Science -- 20 per cent
Papers indexed in Science Citation Index-expanded and Social Science Citation Index -- 20 per cent
Per Capita Performance Per capita academic performance of an institution -- 10 per cent
Total 100 per cent

Note that since 2000, the faculty of the University of Cambridge has been awarded one Nobel Prize, in 2010, which was its first since 1984, while UCL and Oxford have both had none. Indeed, the University of Oxford's faculty hasn't received one since 1973. By contrast, MIT and Columbia have both had five; UC Berkeley has had four while Stanford, Rockefeller, Johns Hopkins, Chicago and Princeton have each had two and Harvard one.

Here is Shanghai University's much more believable 2010 ranking that ranks Cambridge fifth and Oxford tenth, and these are the only two UK universities in the top 20:

1. Harvard University
2. University of California, Berkeley
3. Stanford University
4. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
5. University of Cambridge
6. California Institute of Technology
7. Princeton University
8. Columbia University
9. University of Chicago
10. University of Oxford
11. Yale University
12. Cornell University
13. University of California, Los Angeles
14. University of California, San Diego
15. University of Pennsylvania
16. University of Washington
17. University of Wisconsin, Madison
18. The Johns Hopkins University
18. University of California, San Francisco
20. University of Tokyo

The QS is a flawed index and should be ignored. The University of Cambridge is not the best university in the world.

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51 comments

Sat, 2012-07-07 10:48 — Reshhia (not verified)

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Tue, 2011-09-06 00:36 — Awake!

jo
are u kidding? u think Blanchflower is going to concede how bad things are? so soon after the last bunch left? no way!! he will wait till it gets wore and more time elapses- real soilutions won't be put forward since he has not the required instincts or his political masters will not allow him, just tittle tattle about how it's possible to scientifically ascertain which i the best university... Balls cares not for the children of this country, and the economic imbeciles march to his tune... they think it's a science!!

Fri, 2011-09-09 23:00 — Gavin Moodie (not verified)

I don’t think there is any ‘University of Shanghai’. There is a Shanghai University founded in 1922 which has its main campus in the Baoshan district.

Blanchflower means the academic ranking of world universities produced by the Shanghai Jiao Tong University which originated in the Nanyang Public School in 1896 and now has its main campus in the Minhang district.

Sloppy.

Fri, 2011-09-09 23:08 — Jo (not verified)

hehe and very sad

Tue, 2011-09-06 00:46 — Chris (not verified)

Danny, my education spans Glasgow, Oxford and Yale, so I'm well placed to comment, albeit subjectively. Your argument falls flat when you on one hand talk of objectivity and assume that two or three prize winners in one subject area establishes superiority, and on the other tell me that I have to visit (pretty subjective, I'd say) to see how far the UK is behind. This means that your work as an economist is of less value, according to your logic, than someone at another university if that university has more Nobels in chemistry and is higher up the table. That, as you put it, is baloney.

Secondly, you do Oswald a disservice: if you read all of his thoughts on this, he also says league tables are dangerous and unhelpful to academia on the whole, as they compare on a linear scale institutions that were never meant to be compared (see my earlier post on this, which was never replied to). That is a touch more nuanced than your own argument which is that this new table is less reliable than another.

The point is not about whether Cambridge or Edinburgh is too high, it's about your erroneous assumption that it's a 'bad' table and that there's a more accurate way of ranking universities. They are where they are on the criteria- and I don't for a second think STJU is any better in that regard. I understand your job as a journalist and academic in the United States, so your line of thought makes sense in this light- but don't present yourself as free from bias. If you were a student of mine using that logic, I'd fail you. I'd hope, if I handed work in with as many flaws, you'd be quick to do the same to me.

If you want to continue this by email, I would be happy to- I have considerably more evidence which I could share. You never know, I might even succeed in talking you round.

Fri, 2011-09-09 23:10 — Jo (not verified)

Shame you couldnt be more thorough and trace the foundation back to the Ming dynasty...sloppy

Tue, 2011-09-06 01:04 — Gordon I Sold the Gold Brown (not verified)

Finally something on which I can agree with Dan. One note: I would say putting Harvard on Top means, Chinese overestimate value of politics and politicians.

Wed, 2011-09-07 01:06 — Jo (not verified)

We all love Blanch Mr Divine, he would make the most honest political economist af all time, if only he would be more forthright in what he knows is coming - prob be assasinated if he took office if he spoke the truth.

To put the cat amongst the pigeons once again and end this nonsensical diatribe on failed western uni's...

To use a boxing metaphore to quantify the world we NOW live in: a good small one always loses to a mediocre big one - or words to that effect. Usually this refers to a good 60kg lightweight V a mediocre 80kg middleweight. On the surface the weight difference is only 30 odd points.

Should Blanch now apply his brilliant mind to the same ratios in world Global education system then he will quickly realise that the whole of the above discussion is infact (with due respect) coffee room chat as far as the west uni system is concerened (AND ECONOMIES !!). Shoud the mediocre middle wght feel he is AT ALL in need of further clout he will buy the resource in. Blanch himself is the best example of academic outsourcing as Ferguson and many less notable academics are.

Blanch I ask you in all seriousness, reexamine the range of economic indicies again with a 3-5yr outlook and report honestly what you see in the darkest nights.

The need for structural deleveraging to reestablishing competiveness is here now, I hope that someone like Blanch reenters politics to supervise the dismantaling rather, as economic conditions deteriorate, that we await the coming of the next dictator...if you know what I mean !!

Wed, 2011-09-07 01:38 — Jo (not verified)

Postscript

This entire discussion reminds me so much of the S&P/Moody rating system. The Ratings Agencies debacle is now almost totally discredited - bar S&P's US Downgrade of late.

The above discussion of Camb/Harv or Uni of S.Sudan being best is an exact mirror image and will distract till too late. It misses the point which is the creation of employments and exports should NOW be a university's reason d'etre, even at the cost of the arts.

This is 1945 Japan

Tue, 2011-09-06 01:21 — David Blanchflower1

Chris

Not exactly sure what your point is. Rankings of course have limited use but some objective criteria like Nobels and awards help. I especially like citations, which of course do vary by subject, but one can easily standardise and compare like with like. It makes it harder to compare say psychology and medicine where papers get lots of cites with fairly esoteric fields or the humanities.

But citations do have a nice characteristic that if a paper is worthless it gets few cites.

Google scholar is a useful place to go especially for young scholars. Having an ISI highly cited researcher is a big deal for a university. A simple way to compare universities would be, say to see how many people have papers with at least 1000 google scholar citations. Some papers get a lot of citations, especially if they develop much used methodology (ie are important in a field) and that are path breaking - see this one for example from google scholar

"A rapid and sensitive method for the quantitation of microgram quantities of protein utilizing the principle of protein-dye binding"
MM Bradford - Analytical biochemistry, 1976 - Elsevier

Cited by 126,039

As a society we need to decide how to allocate resources and that is true within universities - we should move money to the places that are doing the most important work. No cites==no good. More cites =better. Nobels tend to get lots of cites...

So these rankings are helpful.
Danny Blanchflower

Wed, 2011-09-07 02:10 — Jo (not verified)

Its that bad that I envisage books from Cambridge Uni being dug up in 500yrs (made of special paper of course being Camb) enlightening scientists in the Neo-Grecian Empire on Quantum Physics much as Algebra re-entered Europe - and the Greeks wondering ehere it all went wrong for the UK

Academia needs to wake up.

Tue, 2011-09-06 01:31 — David Blanchflower1

Here is an example of the use of citations.

Obama pick as head of the councial of economic advisers, alan krueger from Princeton University has 10 papers with at least 1000 citations on google scholar. He is a future Nobel prize winner in economics.

We have nobody comparable in the UK of his age (50)

Danny Blanchflower

Tue, 2011-09-06 03:12 — Mr. Divine (not verified)

@Danny Blanchflower: 'objective' criteria in the ranking of universities! What the hell is objective in this subjective viewpoint?

Here is my list of intellectual masturbation in order of greatest sperm production.. the real objective criteria.

1. UCLA .. IT HAS LOTS OF LALA LAND STUDENTS
2. LSE
3. THE UNIVERSITY DANNY TEACHES IN ...something in New Hampshire
4. The Harvard School of Business ... educating future leaders of US debt.

Researched by the Sperm Institute of Intellectual Masturbation (ranked 7th).

Tue, 2011-09-06 07:58 — Jo (not verified)

Mr Divine,

I actually respect Blanch as an economist who tells it as he sees it bar concentrating too much on academia and the world campus eco system. Lets not forget that he did infact stick the finger up against interest rate rise in the MPC (claim to fame) - academic now alas.

I would appeciate greatly, having examined theoretical future indicies, if he took a 3-5yr outlook and honestly report what he sees in the abyss.

In the meantime I wish him well amongst the Oak Trees.

Tue, 2011-09-06 08:30 — DK (not verified)

Yes, the QS rankings are absurd, but the Shanghai rankings are worse: as far as I can discern they simply don't measure work in the humanities, and counting Nobel prize winners is as ridiculous as anything in the QS methodology. What is really necessary is dumping the entire culture of league tables. Different universities do different things well, and even a single department within a particular university is capable of serving some kinds of students brilliantly and disappointing others. And Danny: as someone who has taught both at Stanford and at a Russell Group uni, I can assure you that when it comes to undergraduate education the latter is very comparable to the former, and for the most part superior to what you'd find at prestigious public US institutions, like UC Berkeley. For the best undergraduate teaching in the US, you need to look at "liberal arts" colleges. But as they don't have graduate programmes, they're not even ranked.

Foreign Faculty (Former Foreign Student).'s picture

Sat, 2011-09-10 10:01 — Foreign Faculty (Former Foreign Student). (not verified)

"It is unclear whether having more foreign students and faculty should even have a positive rank; less is probably better."

While he's at it, Mr Blanchflower should have said it is unclear whether having women and non-white faculty should even have a positive rank.

Universities were better places when the faculty/staff were only privileged white men... not.

Tue, 2011-09-06 10:00 — Mr. Divine (not verified)

Jo, I too respect Danny and even approve of Keynesian injection but I too would like to see him say in what ways should the government invest. I think self sufficiency is the one area that people can get enthused about especially alternative power. Germany leads the way.

By the way Jo, he knows I'm joking around sometimes.

Tue, 2011-09-06 10:05 — Mr. Divine (not verified)

DK: You're spot on about variations between department and even within. The best linguistics departments in the world are the Australian National University and Sydney University because of what they teach.
The best Russian Studies department used to be Swansea University in the 80s because it was of the only ones!

Tue, 2011-09-06 11:12 — Olijaan

There has been a huge proliferation in rankings of universities (and their impact) in the last couple of decades. It is of course questionable if rankings measure what actually counts; the weight commonly given to peer citations and publications obviously favours the sciences and has an English-language bias, and coupled with the importance of age and size this tends to produce a super league of well-established universities in English-speaking countries, as we can see above.

Given that the criteria used are subjective, rather than being dismissed as “fluff” the QS ranking is quite useful as it has deliberately taken up a student-centric approach (in contrast to Shanghai Jiao Tong) and, surely, diversity in rankings will better suit user needs.

As rankings are here to stay I think it would be better to address how they could be used more fruitfully (new criteria for excellence in teaching and innovation could be included, for example, giving smaller institutions more of a chance, and all missions of higher education should be considered). There is a lot to be said for a ranking of rankings, in which they would be audited to ensure minimum standards, and moving forward from rankings to benchmarking as the comparison of the performance of a system with that of other systems, which would identify good practice.

Tue, 2011-09-06 11:39 — Robert Taggart

Judging by the PPE graduates which OxBridge produces - what use is a 'higher' edjucayshun ?
Oh, while we be on the subject... these sums the NS now forces us bloggers to do... any prizes for the most right answers ? !

Sun, 2011-09-11 19:01 — Akim (not verified)

"[S]ince 2000, the faculty of the University of Cambridge has been awarded one Nobel Prize, in 2010..."

More quantitatively, here's the SJTU ranking's breakdown of the top 10 by faculty quality - Cambridge and Harvard are very close and significantly outperform all others:

1 Harvard University 100
2 Stanford University 78.4
3 Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) 81.9
4 University of California, Berkeley 79.3
5 University of Cambridge 96.7
6 California Institute of Technology 68.8
7 Princeton University 87.1
8 Columbia University 67.4
9 University of Chicago 83.9
10 University of Oxford 57.6

Quality of Faculty (Award): The total number of the staff of an institution winning Nobel Prizes in Physics, Chemistry, Medicine and Economics and Fields Medal in Mathematics. Staff is defined as those who work at an institution at the time of winning the prize. Different weights are set according to the periods of winning the prizes. The weight is 100% for winners in 2001-2010, 90% for winners in 1991-2000, and so on.

Wed, 2011-09-07 14:07 — Awake!

Jo
agreed. Sometimes i wonder whether thye bank bail out was actually a good thing- there would have been 'disaster', but short and sharp rather that the interminable dragging on we're getting- and the 'deniers' would be a little less quiet- bullies tend to shut up when stood up to,,,

Sat, 2011-09-10 13:51 — David Blanchflower1

SJTU league table is right the 2011 league tables are out. Little has changed although UCL has joined the top twenty. The US has 33 of the top 50 while the UK has five. Cambridge is not number one!

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 Chicago
10 University of Oxford
11 Yale University
12 University of California, Los Angeles
13 Cornell University
14 University of Pennsylvania
15 University of California, San Diego
16 University of Washington
17 University of California, San Francisco
18 The Johns Hopkins University
19 University of Wisconsin - Madison
20 University College London

Gavin Moodie is correct to point out that the ranking are conducted at Shanghai Jiao Tong University. Sorry i was a bit sloppy.

Danny Blanchflower

Tue, 2011-09-06 14:00 — NR (not verified)

A Nobel Prize is no indication of how good someone is at teaching. Most undergraduates will place a priority on the value of the teaching. Unless they are going to university so they can walk past Nobel laureates in the corridor.

Mon, 2011-11-28 18:06 — Geraint (not verified)

This article is a load of 'old baloney'. I haven't even read the whole thing, which makes this comment about as well-researched as Mr Blanchflower's opinion.

Wed, 2011-09-07 15:25 — David Blanchflower1

I quite understand some of the comments about the importance of teaching but a university education is meant to be about learning not entertainment. Universities differ from high schools in that the students hopefully are being taught by researchers who a at the frontiers of knowledge.

As far as the humanities are concerned they are clearly vital but university's reputation is made by the quality of it's research in the sciences. It's discoveries that matter.

At Dartmouth and other US universities science and economics students do a lot of humanities courses which are a crucial part of their education that makes them whole.

There is a big problem now in the uk as the price of education rises so the number of students choosing to take humanities will inevitably decline. The fix of course is to broaden the type of education that undergrads receive. Otherwise humanities are in trouble.

Danny Blanchflower

Mon, 2011-09-05 18:08 — Clare (not verified)

Danny when you get off the subject of Slasher you can really be quite objective. What you say about Ox and Cambs research is by and large true, those universities live off their reputation and have done so for a while.

Wed, 2011-09-07 17:36 — Jo (not verified)

David,

A lot of what I say is tongue in cheek; however the demise of the Moorish Empire in Spain should be a shining example of a society that had it all, especially in the field of sciences to mention the humanities - streets ahead of the rest of Europe, if not the world.

Things are that bad David

It is no mystery why they disappeared, they forgot to have a standing army ! What we are forgetting today is to urgently refocus education on employment creation & exports - this shoud be the new bar to measure academic achievement. I would expect you to disagree if you were teaching Hamlet at Dartmouth, but last time I checked you were still in the Economic Faculty.

Tue, 2011-09-06 16:47 — Billy Bremner (not verified)

Where is Leeds United in the league table, Danny?

Mon, 2011-09-05 18:55 — Chris (not verified)

...because having three Nobel Prize Winners and a couple of fields medals in your economics, chemistry and maths departments in the last 20 years means a university with 3,000 staff and 50 departments is much better or worse than another? Maybe you should actually use the old grey matter once in a while, it might get you somewhere. Every ranking has its problems, and only someone with deep-rooted biases could possibly come out with a comment that one table ends up with a more 'believable' top 10 than another.

I think you should make your own ranking, based on whatever institution you think 'deserves' to be in any given place based purely on preconceptions you have. That way you won't confuse yourself.

Mon, 2011-09-05 19:06 — David Blanchflower1

Chris
Used the grey matter mate - that's why using science is generally the best way to go. I am simply advocating the use of objective criteria which turns out to be almost exactly consistent with my priors. I am a big fan of the university of Edinburgh, for example, which ranks 20th on the QS ranking but there is no way on God's green earth that it ranks above UC Berkeley (21st); Northwestern (24th) or UCLA (34th) or the University of Wisconsin- Madison (41st). No way no how.

Unless you use criteria that tell you nothing about research quality such as the number of foreign students, # foreign faculty, class size or other laughable stuff that is. Get real.
Danny Blanchflower

Tue, 2011-09-06 17:13 — SJTU league table (not verified)

The latest 2011 Shanghai league table has been out. Please update the table quoted in your article: http://www.shanghairanking.com/ARWU2011.html

Mon, 2011-09-05 19:36 — Bob (not verified)

How many of those US Nobel prizes were won by people born in the US? It is well known that the US has been importing geniuses during a period of outsized geopolitical power.

Mon, 2011-09-05 19:50 — Markson (not verified)

The no of US universities in the lists is way out of proportion to the rest of the world. Could someone please tell me why this is? Are Americans educating the rest of the world? Is there no corelation between a countries universities and its economic stature? I've come across these rankings a few times over the years and always wondered.

Mon, 2011-09-05 19:52 — Stuart (not verified)

The University of Cambridge has won more Nobel Prizes than you claim. From your link:

MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge, United Kingdom

has won multiple Nobel Prizes over the last 40 years, the most recent being in 2009, and is a part of the University of Cambridge, I know this as I know several people at the University of Cambridge who work at this facility.

I'm not saying that Cambridge is the best university in the world, I'm sure it is not but that your facts are not particularly accurate.

Mon, 2011-09-05 20:19 — Awake!

Inaccurate facts and and a skewed article. U claim to use 'science' to establish the best universities in the world. Sir, this is quackery ....Of course when u write ure never biased!

Mon, 2011-09-05 20:52 — Eddy S (not verified)

i would say Shanghai University's table is baloney. UCLA at 13 i don't think so! Imperial at 6 i can believe it.

Tue, 2011-09-06 18:50 — DJ (not verified)

In Danny's rubbish ranking, Cambridge is no. 1 in the world. In the preferable ranking it is still number 5. Given the vast number of universities in the world, and the huge disparities in wealth between the top US and UK universities, that is still a remarkable result.

Danny is probably also somewhat blinded by his own disciplinary location. He is surely right that Economics as a field is much stronger in the US than the UK, or anywhere else for that matter (whether this is a good or a bad thing is a different issue, given how abject much of the work produced by economists is). But the same is not necessarily true of other subjects. The top History depts in the UK easily compare to the best in the US. Oxford has the largest, and arguably the best, Philosophy Faculty in the world. Cambridge Maths and Physics are certainly comparable to top US programs. And so on, and so forth. Econ is the outlier.

Mon, 2011-09-05 21:04 — Chris (not verified)

Danny, I could give you a long lesson on why you cannot objectively compare universities, as they are big, complicated things with differing missions, biases towards subjects, sizes and so on. All 'science' does for you is tell you that Harvard has better apples than Dartmouth's oranges, which in turn are roughly equal to Ohio State's bananas. Nobels and Fields mean zilch to the average undergraduate or employer. Deep down, you know this- is LSE better at Economics than MIT is at Physics? Essentially, that's where research quality statistics leave you. I am not advocating the merits of this ranking over STJU or vice versa, I am merely pointing out that you're a million miles away from making a reasonable point by claiming that there is a 'believable' ranking and Edinburgh doesn't deserve to be above another university. It all depends on the criteria and weighting upon criteria (you *are* an economist, aren't you?). You might as well rank them based on the number of nice windows they have in the student centre, it'll get you about as far.

For that reason, you are very wrong. Go and read Professor Andrew Oswald's take on league tables at Warwick University- unlike you, he's taken some time to think about the problem. If it were up to me, I'd make the students we both teach think about the statistics and weighting behind each methodology, and hopefully scrap the rankings altogether. It's a hard enough battle for me to tell a teenager that it matters not if overall X is 9th and Y 21st, and that their choice should not for one minute be based on what a journalist thinks after some number crunching, without people in a position such as yours spouting the same unenlightened thought I get from parents at open days. You were trained as a critical thinker I assume, you'd be well served to use those skills.

Wed, 2011-09-07 19:46 — Jo (not verified)

Awake,

I sadly agree, that wouldve been the better option and less painfull in the longterm. The "interminable dragging" got dragged out again today by the Half Pegnany Germans. There is zero chance of a comprehensive soloution to the Euro Banking/Sovreign Debt debacle as the Germans, infact being the ECB covenant, will never spin the wheel on how many pence in the pound are at stake.

Sadly the end result of the Euro breakup will also make them realise that selling Mercs arent that easy anymore. But a breakup is the right decision alas.

Mon, 2011-09-05 21:17 — Chris (not verified)

...I should add that it struck me immediately after posting that you co-authored (which, for the record, a work I hold in very high regard) research with Oswald. It is therefore all the more amazing that he's managed to grasp the finer points of this problem. Next time, I'd get him to write the piece for you, because no matter the respect I have for some of your work, on this point you are miles out.

Wed, 2011-09-07 19:53 — DJ (not verified)

Danny,

Your devaluation of the humanities (and social sciences?) is both all-too-common and depressing. It signifies the philistinism that pervades our culture. And while it clearly contains some truth (insofar as it accurately represent how many people think about the issue), it does not exhaust it. Ater all, the LSE has a global reputation, but what major scientific discoveries has it made? The best US (and UK) universities are renowned because they are strong across the board, in the humanities, social sciences and natural sciences.

While there are important exceptions - Imperial, MIT, Cal Tech, LSE - most of the top universities on any ranking are multi-faculty, multi-disciplinary institutions. As they should be.

Mon, 2011-09-05 21:32 — Jack (not verified)

Cambridge have won plenty of Nobels since 1984 - Sen, Walker, Sulston, Mirlees?

Wed, 2011-09-07 20:03 — Jo (not verified)

Focus should now be on Humanity not the Humanities. Anyone who doesnt realise the seriousness of the economic situation is living in gaga land

Mon, 2011-09-05 23:06 — David Blanchflower1

Stuart
OK Venkatraman Ramakrishnan from MRC won the 2009, The Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Point taken but it doesn't really destroy my main thesis. Cambridge is not the best university in the world; sorry to disappoint.

Chris
My pal Oswald and I have written many things together and we apparently have broadly similar views on these QS rankings. He got all worked up, rightly about this QS oufits' 2007 ranking and I quote.

"2007 saw the release, by a UK commercial organization, of an
unpersuasive world university ranking. This put Oxford and
Cambridge at equal second in the world. Lower down, at around the
bottom of the world top-10, came University College London, above
MIT. A university with the name of Stanford appeared at number 19
in the world. The University of California at Berkeley was equal to
Edinburgh at 22 in the world.
Such claims do us a disservice. The organizations which promote
such ideas should be unhappy themselves, and so should any supine
UK universities who endorse results they view as untruthful. Using
these league table results on your websites, universities, if in private
you deride the quality of the findings, is unprincipled, and will
ultimately be destructive of yourselves, because if you are not in the truth business what business are you in, exactly? Worse, this kind of
material incorrectly reassures the UK government that our universities are international powerhouses. Let us instead, a bit more coolly, do what people in universities are paid to do. Let us use reliable data to try to discern the truth."

http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/staff/academic/oswald/indieu...

Maybe you haven't been to MIT, Harvard, Princeton, Caltech, UCLA, Chicago, Stanford, Columbia, Cornell, Johns Hopkins,Yale, Penn UC Berkeley, UC San Diego and Northwestern to name but a few. You are living in the past if you think UK universities are comparable
Danny Blanchflower

Mon, 2011-09-05 23:06 — Jo (not verified)

Chris,

Background - need for immediate (2-3 yr) structual deleveraging - NHS and all - to reestablish competitiveness and avoid mass-unemployment. Now that the final & massively foreign leveraged (property) boom has popped. The emperor now lives in the real world with scant means of avoiding mass-unemployment.

Whether David should read other/deeper studies to qualify global uni rankings is actually academic (hehe) in my opinion and should infact be measured by pre 1500 buildings or room numbers or Oak trees in the grounds. The fact is that unless the creame de la cream of Oxf & Cam discover a 21st century Spinning Jenny or Edison Light Bulb in the next 2yrs (the only outside chance of avoiding near-future Mass-Unemployment)then the light bulb will turn of in the west as we fade into history). The UK imparticular is famous for inventions which were never financed or saw the light of day in the good times - let alone present circumstances !!).

Best measure infact would have been to closely study all graduates for the past 25 yrs and the future employment/eports the contributed to creating (the single biggest political issue which will visit this country in the next 2-3yrs). I assure you that it would have been sad sad reading - bar the niche phama exports, rolls engines and burbery etc which contribute less than 3% of employment.

Deeper stuctural issued need to be addressed ASAP

Tue, 2011-10-11 20:00 — Hugh Markey (not verified)

Just how can you evaluate 'ivy league'? And look at some of the graduates from these top unis.
'Made in Chelsea' certainly opened our eyes.

Chaps

Wed, 2011-09-07 21:15 — Jo (not verified)

DJ,

David is bing as diplomatic as possible and I respect that. He hopes that his own students will occasionally attend fencing lessons and frequent allegorical love poetry seminars but I believe he knows what is requires.

Watching his last session on Bloom I beleive he is fully aware of what is coming, even if I do not agree with his proposed solutions.

Mon, 2011-09-05 23:38 — Jo (not verified)

Postscript:

I Kid you not, David plese say something (economical even hehe) this is exactly Japan 1945, do or die. Not taking painful decisions immediately to reestablish competitiveness will result in a guaranteed downwads spiral.