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Tag: Times Higher Education

International Rankings Round-Up

So, the international rankings season is now more or less at an end.  What should everyone take away from it?  Well, here’s how Canadian Universities did in the three main rankings (the Shanghai Academic Ranking of World Universities, the QS Rankings and the Times Higher Rankings). Basically, you can paint any picture you want out of that.  Two rankings say UBC is better than last year and one says it is worse.  At McGill and Toronto, its 2-1 the other

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September 28, 2016 No Comments

Who Wins and Who Loses in the “Top 100 Under 50” Rankings

The annual Times Higher Education “Top 100 Under 50” universities came out a few weeks ago.  Australians were crowing about their success, and a few people in Canada noticed that Canada didn’t do so well – only four spots: Calgary 22nd, Simon Fraser 27th, UQAM 85th, and Concordia 96th.   So, today, we ask the question: why do young Canadian universities not fare well on these rankings? Well, one way to look at this is to ask: “who does well at these rankings?”

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May 20, 2015 1 Comment

Rankings in the Middle East

If you follow rankings at all, you’ll have noticed that there is a fair bit of activity going on in the Middle East these days.  US News & World Report and Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) both published “Best Arab Universities” rankings last year; this week, the Times Higher Education (THE) produced a MENA (Middle East and North Africa) ranking at a glitzy conference in Doha. The reason for this sudden flurry of Middle East-oriented rankings is pretty clear: Gulf universities have a lot of

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February 25, 2015 2 Comments

Times Higher Rankings, Weak Methodologies, and the Vastly Overblown “Rise of Asia”

I’m about a month late with this one (apologies), but I did want to mention something about the most recent version of the Times Higher Education (THE) Rankings.  You probably saw it linked to headlines that read, “The Rise of Asia”, or some such thing. As some of you may know, I am inherently suspicious about year-on-year changes in rankings.  Universities are slow-moving creatures.  Quality is built over decades, not months.  If you see huge shifts from one year to

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October 30, 2014 7 Comments

The Problem with Global Reputation Rankings

I was in Athens this past June, at an EU-sponsored conference on rankings, which included a very intriguing discussion about the use of reputation indicators that I thought I would share with you. Not all rankings have reputational indicators; the Shanghai (ARWU) rankings, for instance, eschew them completely.  But QS and Times Higher Education (THE) rankings both weight them pretty highly (50% for QS, 35% for THE).  But this data isn’t entirely transparent.  THE, who release their World University Rankings

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September 30, 2014 3 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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