3 ms·
Okay, taking a look at the criteria they say they use. Most of the weight is on research. Fair enough. I'm prepared to believe that conclusion, at least as an
by rwallace 12y ago
Okay, taking a look at the criteria they say they use.
Most of the weight is on research. Fair enough. I'm prepared to believe that conclusion, at least as an overall tendency. However, the context of the discussion was education, and that's the context in which I'm disputing the basis of the claim of superiority of American universities.
Of the fraction of the weight placed on quality of teaching, a significant chunk goes on 'perceived prestige' which obviously begs the question.
A small chunk goes on student/teacher ratio, which is a weak indicator; in particular, its behavior is more threshold than monotonic (i.e. you don't want it to be too high, but there's no real advantage in having it remarkably low).
And a chunk goes on total budget per teacher, which is a positively perverse criterion and tends to substantiate the stories I've heard about the level of waste in American universities.
So that's the 'world university rankings'. Moral of that story: when you see an official looking table that seems to support a controversial conclusion, look carefully at where the data comes from.
- Turing_Machine 12y agoThe U.S. system has both research universities and teaching colleges. Some institutions are both (e.g., Harvard), but many are one or the other. >when you see an official looking table that seems to support a controversial conclusion I've presented some data. If you have contrary data, present it. Otherwise it's just your opinion, no? I mean, you dispute the metrics they use, but don't provide any of your own. What would be a better measure of the quality of teaching?
- buckbova 12y agoAre you trying to get someone on the internet to admit that they are wrong? I applaud the effort. Here are upvotes.
- rwallace 12y ago(Sibling comment since it's not giving me a 'reply' link for some reason) To be clear, I'm not claiming European universities are better for education (as opposed to research) than American ones. I only have experience of the former, so I'm not in a position to make that claim. I'm merely disputing the reverse claim. I'm saying unless we can find accounts from people who have experience of both, the correct position to take is an agnostic one.