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Category: Rankings

The Leiden Rankings 2013

Though it was passed over in silence here in Canada, the new Leiden university research rankings made a bit of a splash elsewhere, last week.  I gave a brief overview of the Leiden rankings last year.  Based on five years’ worth of Web of Science publication and citation data (2008-2012), it is by some distance the best way to compare institutions’ current research output and performance.  The Leiden rankings have always allowed comparisons along a number of dimensions of impact and

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April 25, 2013 No Comments

U-Multirank

Some of you have been calling and e-mailing over the last few weeks, asking me about the new global higher education rankings system called U-Multirank (full disclosure: I played a very minor “advisory” role in this project, in 2009).  To save everyone else a call, I thought I’d give you the skinny, via this blog. U-Multirank is a creation of the European Union.  Stung by the THE and Shanghai rankings, which showed continental European (especially French) universities lagging badly, France took advantage of

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April 23, 2013 1 Comment

Times Higher Education Reputation Rankings 2013

You’ll recall that yesterday, in reference to the orgy of hype that accompanies the annual release of the THE World Reputation Rankings, I made the point that universities’ reputation really doesn’t change all that much on a year-by-year basis, and that, therefore, perhaps said orgy was a wee bit overdone. When all was said and done, five universities (Arizona, Indiana, Leeds, U Zurich, and Tel Aviv) fell out of the rankings, with a similar number replacing them (Monash, Moscow State,

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March 5, 2013 4 Comments

The Paradox of University Rankings

By the time you read this, the Times Higher Education’s annual Reputation Rankings will be out, and will be the subject of much discussion on Twitter and the Interwebs and such.  Much as I enjoy most of what Phil Baty and the THE do, I find the hype around these rankings pretty tedious. Though they are not an unalloyed good, rankings have their benefits.  They allow people to compare the inputs, outputs, and (if you’re lucky) processes and outcomes at

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March 4, 2013 6 Comments

A Revolution in Faculty Bargaining?

Earlier this week, I was riffing on how to make good salary comparisons when I came across a faculty union which has been doing just that. The faculty union at the University of Victoria is feeling a bit aggrieved that its members’ pay is lower than at comparable universities.  When I first saw their numbers, I was a bit skeptical: UVic went through a significant generational shift nine or ten years ago, so their age/rank profile might potentially account for some of

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February 15, 2013 6 Comments
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One Thought to Start Your Day is our founder and CEO Alex Usher’s popular daily blog, brimming with up-to-the-minute insights and informed opinions on today’s higher education industry.

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