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Chinese University Tops MIT in Engineering Rankings
- _chris_ 11y ago"Each school’s score is based on its number of publications and citations as well as its global and regional research reputation." Oh lord... one is easy to game, and the other is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
- mattlutze 11y agoThough, that formula for prestige has been in place for at least the last century in European and American universities.
- seanmcdirmid 11y agoAnd it has been gamed for at least the last century. Nothing new here.
- bsder 11y agoExactly, so MIT has clearly been ... Oh, wait, you mean you were implying that Tsinghua University was gaming the rankings ... MIT students, in my experience, have been overrated for years.
- nolok 11y agoHe is not claiming one or the other is gaming it, he is saying this is a terrible set of metrics to rank universities with
- nolok 11y agoHe is not claiming one or the other is gaming it, he is saying this is a terrible set of metrics to rank universities with
- warkid 11y ago"Ok, they've outplayed us in our game. Lets call this game terrible and start a different one with new rules!"
- nolok 11y agoSee my other comment before attributing malice to my words. As a french, I've never in my life found the rules to be any good as they were biased against us and other non english speaking country (imho).
- globuous 11y agoExcept of course for the "Mines ParisTech : Professional Ranking of World Universities" :D https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mines_ParisTech_:_Professional_Ranking_of_World_Universities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mines_ParisTech_:_Professional... Which is actually a really interesting ranking. Not based on academic research whatsoever.
- borski 11y agoIn my experience, those that bash MIT have been overrated for years. See? I can use anecdotal evidence to offend swaths of people too.
- nolok 11y agoThat's how all those rankings are done. Some of them are even "worse" in that they only include english language publications, and result with US and UK taking pretty much every spot in the top 50, claiming the rest of europe is terrible. (I'm not saying that US/UK do or don't have the best universities, I'm saying that system of ranking is terrible for so many reasons)
- arethuza 11y agoThe Professor I worked for in the early '90s told me that he'd been involved in some ranking exercise for one of the UK funding bodies where he was deeply unpopular as he wanted to work from objective measures and then come up with a ranking whereas the standard game was apparently to work out the rankings based on which departments everyone "knew" to be best and then designing the ranking scheme to get the "right" answer. That kind of stuff, and the whole nonsense around the desperate scramble for publications really put me off of a career in academia.
- jimsojim 11y agoAlso, more than that these rankings should weigh much more on the quality of education rather than the research outcome because a large mass of college students are misguided through these rankings. Is it the responsibility of these ranking systems or the students themselves to be more careful? I am not sure. Another way to tackle this is to have different kind of rankings- say, Research rankings, Teaching quality rankings- following more objective metrics rather than opinion based, as arethuza mentioned in his anecdote.
- Mair 11y agoUniversity scores have always been somewhat useless, just look at the criteria they are based on. At least I feel like they are heavily favoring already prestigious universities making it hard for anybody to catch up. But if you think about it without considering their past, why should MIT be better rated than Tsinghua? As of now they both are doing amazing research and I don't think that MIT is gaming the scores any less than Tsinghua is.
- suryon 11y agoTo those that believe that US system is rotten and ineffective and think that Chinese are doing something right because they are Chinese I can tell you only one thing. NEVER TRUST A COMMUNIST REGIME. Even if you compare millionaires to millionaires the quality of life in China is far worse than in the USA. Never trust a communist propaganda. Never ever do that. The gov and chinese in general are known for trying to save face at every occasion and will fabricate anything that can benefit them. If USA and UK is so bad then why thousands of Chinese are trying to immigrate there ? In Communist regime even if you are good and talented you will become a property of the state and they will use you for their benefit. Do not expect a good quality life but constant abuse for more propaganda and mind control. No wonder that massive amount of people of Hong Kong are requesting british passports. Because in China you are nothing more than a property of a regime.
- legulere 11y agoGood then that China is an autocratic capitalist country and not communist.
- suryon 11y agoYeah autocratic capitalist country my ass. Did you get your pills today ? There is not a true communist state in the world. Not even DPRK. But China after DPRK has the most communist traits. It's ugly regime and if you have never been there or did business with them you have no clue what you are talking about. And that is just the tip of the iceberg.
- dang 11y ago> Yeah autocratic capitalist country my ass. Did you get your pills today? This is not acceptable on Hacker News. We ban accounts that do this repeatedly. Please read the site guidelines and follow them. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html
- Grue3 11y ago
- netcan 11y agoSo… Everyone is righty pointing out the uselessness of ranking systems. But, these are also the same kinds of ranking systems that place MIT, Cambridge, Stanford & the rest in the elite. Publication, reputation, etc. It's not about a specific ranking system either. Every ranking uses circular, subjective or self fulfilling measures. These reputations are also very long lived and carry outside of their context. Great research in biology does not really indicate great undergraduate teaching in the humanities. Universities attract students, funding, press and all the other goodies with their reputations. Students then trade on these reputations. It's a big problem overall, and it doesn't have good feedback loops of the kind which will encourage universities to improve. Also, the more attention the rankings get, the more they get gamed and corrupted. Here's the thing, say you are looking for a place to study mechanical engineering, it will be difficult to find the new upstart schools that are doing great work. It's even harder to get employers, parents and colleagues to respect it. That's to say nothing of a course attempting to teach a subject like engineering outside the paradigm of Universities altogether. It's a pickle. The world is way too big for us to rely on a vague name recognition & reputation system anymore. It's too dynamic to wait for them to self correct and it's way too thirsty for better ways to train and educate to be without a dynamic system where new approaches and institutions can emerge.
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- spacecowboy_lon 11y agoGood Technicians also ask Why and they also have to remind the engineer how Ohms law goes some times :-)
- ash30 11y agoYES - most people in technology here are just too eager to build things, to the detriment of any long term strategy. But in other industries I've met locals who are very able critical thinkers and so there is hope. The common thread amongst them is time studying abroad though...
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- kailuowang 11y agoThere might be less critical thinking but probably more than you think. The core Chinese culture is advocating avoiding conflicts, and the best way to achieve that to chinese is a hierarchical order. The boss determines what to do, the subordinates do it. Your engineers might very well have some questions, but questioning any person other than their subordinates is against their instinctual habbit. If you want to "see" critical thinking in your team, you need serious and even creative effort to encourage it.
- losvedir 11y agoAre all Chinese businesses run by "creative" foreigners who "understand the root of the problem"? At some point in the hierarchy someone has to be making the meaningful decisions, they can't all just be heads down technicians all the way to... where? A culture of hierarchy and following orders from above is orthogonal to whether or not people understand the issue. You say "they rarely ask why" but that doesn't mean they don't think why. I know in American business it's common to agitate and question your superiors at all levels, but that doesn't necessarily translate to better outcomes. For example, the American military doesn't work that way (it works much more akin to Chinese businesses, really). And the American military is quite good. edit: I say this as an MIT grad who has been mightily impressed by Tsinghua students. I still think MIT is better, of course, ;-) but it doesn't surprise me that Tsinghua is at the top of the list this year.
- iconhacker 11y agoAmerican education based on sales. It sells knowledge and that is why it is going downhill. Being politically correct on races is another curse. And don't talk about creativity when you students cannot do math on paper!
- blumkvist 11y agoIt is? Can you provide some evidence?
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- blisterpeanuts 11y agoThe Weibuo quote in the article sums it up. Would you rather have your child go to Tsinghua or MIT? The fact is, MIT remains the most prestigious scientific and engineering school in the world, and number of published articles be damned. Another metric not considered by USNWR is academic freedom. Can students and faculty at Tsinghua use Google? I don't think so. No Google Scholar, no Google Books, not even Search. How ridiculous. Without equal access to the Internet, a fair comparison is not possible. And what if a student published an article complaining about lack of access to some internet resources? End of career. That said, this evaluation should be a wake up call to American educators that our formerly great academy has deteriorated, brought down by decades of decaying performance in K-12 and lack of energy and commitment in the universities, where many or most of the science and engineering graduate students are foreign born.
- seanmcdirmid 11y agoThey usually know how to jump the wall or get direct lines out for erm research purposes. ChinaSys, an acedemic/industry systems conference, is taking registrations in... Google docs. I hope this is not a wake up call: what we don't need in academia is more gaming of the publication and citation system! This is a wake up call to not take usnews too seriously.
- blisterpeanuts 11y agoInteresting. I guess when it's a matter of national prestige and encouraging scientific accomplishment, the authorities might look the other way. But that's not really the same as complete and open access. And I agree with you that we don't need even more gaming of the system; but we definitely need more motivation of K-12 students in the math and science fields.
- seanmcdirmid 11y agoThe "motivation" should come from a genuine curiosity and interest in making the world a better place. Academia, even western academia, is often motivated by securing more funding so they can....secure more funding. That creates a closed loop that serves no one outside of it. The US News report just shows who is better at gaming the system. Heck, even MIT has its problems, though you'll find more pockets of genuine interest and capabilities. Tsinghua also has a lot of great researchers, but usually this is inspite of, not because of, the games played to optimize for these metrics.
- redwood 11y agoSeeing everyone on here so dismissive is simply shocking to me. If you don't like these results or don't believe them look at the overall trend folks. A decade ago there wouldn't have been the Chinese University in the top 10. Now they have half the top rankings. I take my hat off to them; I respect their achievements and if you follow the trend forward they look unstoppable.and of the people at these universities they or their parents grew up in villages without electricity with nothing. they've built out of that the ability to scratch the stars quickly. much respect let's hope this doesn't turn into a latent Cold War
- olalonde 11y ago> Seeing everyone on here so dismissive is simply shocking to me. Not to me. China bashing on HN is surprisingly common and rewarded with karma. Given that the average HNer doesn't know much about China, I assume the typical cognitive process goes something like "I want to believe this comment => up vote". I personally look forward to the day where we can put nationalism behind us. Also, props to Tsinghua.
- blisterpeanuts 11y agoBA/MA in Chinese studies here. I greatly admire China's accomplishments, starting back around 1,000 BC :) China today is on a trajectory of becoming the premier world technological power, simply based on its tremendous energy and drive and respect for learning. The U.S. and Europe are in decline, by comparison. The U.S. in particular is relying heavily on Chinese and other foreign students to keep its science, math, and engineering graduate programs going. The native U.S. population is lazy and unmotivated by comparison. And tellingly, increasing numbers of Chinese grads are returning to China to work rather than seeking citizenship in the U.S. Even non-Chinese are flocking to China to start up technology companies, something unheard of a generation or two back. I too hope this doesn't turn into some kind of cold war.
- vixen99 11y ago'The U.S. and Europe are in decline, by comparison'. No argument about this. Where are the passionate national debates about why this is so and what can be done about it? Or maybe they are going on and I'm not seeing them.
- somberi 11y agoFor some Indians who may be invested in knowing the rankings, there are 9 of them with the first one starting at 100th position (IIT-D). Ouch.
- morphis 11y agoChina only has two prestigious universities, Peking and Tsing Hua. They collect all financial and political support to make these two universities rank higher and higher, not only to save face on the international stage, but also to make sure all intelligence is under the control of Beijing. They may really have reached success in winning global reputation, but the chance for their research to turn into benefit for common people will be very small.
- melling 11y agoIf it's true, as a matter of national pride, let's hope other countries join the race to have the top ranked engineering university. We could use a dozen more MIT's in the world.
- echevil 11y agoIt'd be more interesting to see a ranking by only the average competitiveness of their undergraduate school students, and I bet you will see lots of Chinese and Indian university on top and American Universities are not anywhere close. America has so many good universities but at the same time just a small talent pool.