Already more than once or twice in Habré, I had to deal with in passing abandoned phrases in the style of “and this university is also included in the first hundred of the world rating” or “this university is bad, it hangs in ratings somewhere in the fourth hundred”. At the same time, it turns out that all the features of a particular institution, all its advantages and disadvantages are somehow magically displayed in a single numerical indicator, which is a clear confirmation of a particular thesis. In fact, the situation is much more complicated and interesting. I would like to share my subjective view of it today. I apologize for the large amount of text, but less can not do it.

Preliminary notes

To begin with, I will express the obvious thought that it is quite difficult for any integral indicator to give an exact name. Obviously, the rating in some way reflects the "quality", but it is difficult to say what exactly is reflected. It is unlikely that an advanced car owner would think of choosing a car by “rating” (assuming a reasonable price): rather, some indicators, such as power, reliability or roominess, plus a subjective feeling of comfort from a particular car, will be used. Perhaps a closer example is wine or cheese. The only objective indicator of the “quality” of the product is the price per unit, but in practice the choice will be determined more by appropriateness and personal taste, not price (if we are not talking about some super-elite products, of course).

Thus, the rating can serve as a quick indicator of "goodness", but to understand the situation, you should dig deeper. After all, many of us read feature stories and forums for weeks to choose a video card or TV. But much more important choice of school sometimes occurs on a whim or on the basis of numerical numerical ratings. I will try to show that each edge of the rating table has its own troubles. Relatively speaking, one does not have enough money for microscopes, while others will buy microscopes only if this benefits the rating. And the happiness and misfortune of universities are so diverse that reducing them to a single figure is a rather naive task.
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Just in case, I add that I wholeheartedly welcome the preparation of any ratings. Rating is a measuring device with which you can improve the atmosphere and productivity of the university, but you must clearly understand the purpose of the device and its indirect nature. The device can be deceived, but there is no need to deceive yourself. For example, if I want to become a healthier person, I will try to lose weight and go in for sports. At the same time, simple scales can help me track my progress. However, if I simply set myself the goal of moving the scale arrow a few divisions to the left, nothing good will come of it: the body can be depleted with some kind of brutal diet and health will not increase.

I do not plan here to engage in full-scale research of various ways of ranking universities, but at least briefly list the most popular indicators found in various methods, it is necessary. So, what factors most often affect the final position in the ratings?

- Number of publications in the most prestigious scientific journals (ratings of ARWU, SCImago)
- In a different way, calculated citation indices (ratings of ARWU, HE, QS, SCImago)
- Expert estimates, that is, data from various types of questionnaires (ratings of HE, QS)
- Number of graduates, the proportion of graduate students among students, the proportion of "employee / student" and similar indicators (ratings of HE, QS)
- Proportion of foreigners among students and employees, joint publications with foreigners (ratings of HE, QS, SCImago)

There are also more exotic indicators, such as estimates of profitability (rating of THE) or the number of Nobel laureates and owners of the Fields medal (rating of ARWU).

Preliminary findings

Before delving into the details, I will share my final opinion. Universities with high ratings, as a rule, are really good as research centers, attract mostly intelligent students and have developed connections with commercial companies, government and foreign laboratories. At the same time, the subjective “goodness” from the point of view of the student and the employee (including a serious scientist) can differ greatly from the obtained indicators. A very low rating is likely to indicate a major funding problem or management policy. In this case, even in low-ranking universities, there may be first-class "islands" for work, but in general the situation is sad. The “middle peasants” can turn out to be “inflated” low-ranking establishments, as well as remarkable places, “sagging” in terms of indicators that the administration does not want or cannot pull up for various reasons.

And the conclusion is again the same: you can read ratings, but choosing a place to work or study based on them is like watching movies in descending order of asterisks on IMDB. Very much hack-work will be eliminated, but it is far from a fact that you will look without stopping. Alas, to manage with a little blood will not work. Read forums, chat with people, ask. In the end, the film goes only a couple of hours, and it will take many years to study or work.

And now - scattered fragments of the mosaic.

Undergraduate

The correlation of the rating and the quality of education of bachelors is the most bizarre. In theory, it should look like this: in a good university, world-class scientists work, who will communicate daily with young blockheads, gradually turning them into world-class specialists. And all this against the backdrop of technology parks, biorobot, spacecraft and other surroundings, which are famous for the best universities in the world.

In practice, all the sadder. Oboltuses need to be told about matan, linear algebra and the basics of algorithms, explain how the process differs from the thread (which is thread) and generally engage in any imbalance that is not always related to your own research. I would say, almost never related, because the content of the basic subjects, in general, has already settled down, and very few people are working to improve the quicksort or the Dijkstra algorithm. In addition, everywhere there is such a sad phenomenon as the "educational program", according to which the university must provide a certain set of basic subjects. At the same time, not all really working specialists want to deal with these items (and many have already forgotten them). So books like Teaching What You Don't Know are not at all from the humor department and not from the practice of “kolkhoz and design” universities. And, frankly, the professor has very little motivation to work on improving his own teaching skills. To whom it is interesting (by personality), it works, who does not - it scores.

Probably cool to hear about the algorithm of Christofides from the mouth of Christofides. I also believe that the very presence of people of this level somehow influences the student’s subconscious, but we will be fair: for basic courses, teacher's skill as a teacher is more important, and it is not reflected in the ratings in any way. Well, not at all, except for surveys among students. In addition, unfortunately, abstract Christofides is not so interesting to communicate with first-year students as he is with him. Because bachelors are, in general, a gray mass. Yes, among them there are intelligent and very intelligent, but what to take from them? They are learning from morning to evening, yet they are not able to do anything, and after distribution to laboratories, there is only a little time left (let’s say, two years) to bring them up to date, get some result in the form of a thesis and say goodbye forever . No matter how sad it may sound, a bachelor's degree for a professor is not a very promising investment of time.

At least, this is how I see it from my own experience and through communication with colleagues. The task of the bachelor is to learn basic subjects, compose a diploma and leave the university safely. Those who are more ceilings are not too eager to get involved in a large laboratory project. He guys are young, they are interested to try themselves in different roles. Well, right, let them try; Yes, only I have no time for messing with them very much (the day is not rubber), and they usually cannot be given serious work.

However, of course, in a high-ranking university, in principle, the situation should be quite healthy. Students are stronger, teachers are stronger, random people do not linger. But in general, it is an indirect factor; and in any case we can talk about the first hundreds of institutions rating. I would say that several flagship universities of any good developed country should provide a healthy atmosphere. Regardless of your rating points.

Bike from life . One of the largest Russian universities, brand and all that. The dean of the faculty is a great scientist, no fools. Students know about it and write to each other in his diploma. Dozens of annually, because it is fashionable, because the name of the big man will be in the diploma. In fact: the dean is constantly on the road or just in business, he talks with his clients once a month (if not less) on schedule, people protect diplomas on some kind of side exhaust from his work, after a year 99% of graduates are placed in regular offices of a different profile where even the name of the scientific field of the dean will not tell people anything.

Master's

Master's degree program is a paradoxical shifter of undergraduate studies, in which, again, many of the formal criteria that are important at the university level are not very significant for a particular student. The Russian "bolognaise" has not yet been brought to mind, and the "bachelor" is perceived by most people as a "non-specialist" who is not smart enough to finish the magistracy. Within the framework of those educational systems, where the division at the bachelor / master level has been around for a long time, the perception is completely different. Bachelor is an absolutely full-fledged graduate, ready to work in the industry. A master is a person who has spent an additional two years improving their research skills . This is not just a declaration, it is a different learning style and a different style of perception of the result. The master is first of all not a mechanical addition of new courses to those already studied, but work on a research project in a university laboratory. Let us take as an example the international IT master's program at the University of Eastern Finland: out of 120 “credit units” of the master minimum, 50 units are pure research (graduation project as a scientific work plus “IT Project”, that is, software corresponding to the project), and another 7-10 units can be equated to studies conditionally (they are given for the preparation of a personal curriculum, the course "University study skills", scientific English and "master's seminar"). In addition, such forms are practiced as obtaining credits for some well-defined work (similar to the term student) and “book exams”, that is, passing an exam based on the results of independent study of a particular book.

Thus, for a student, what matters is not the university as a whole, but the specific laboratory in which he is to work, and the personality of the specific manager. Of course, in general, a good university is always more good laboratories, but particulars must be carefully studied. It's like talking about whether New York is good or bad. General reasoning is good from the outside, but from the inside a resident of Harlem sees a completely different picture from that of a West Village resident. Even in very good universities, various sad stories happen, when scientific leaders squeeze all the juices out of their subordinates for the success of the project and do not allow them to defend themselves for several years (because “the work is still damp”). After all, undergraduates and graduate students are the main workforce of the laboratories, and behind every successful project (which makes the university a name!), A train of hundreds of sleepless nights of students and staff stretches. Each laboratory is a personal patrimony of the head of the department, and it is necessary to treat the distribution in one place or another as a job placement. Projects are important, the working atmosphere is important, relations between people are important, the personality of the boss is important. Yes, it is very difficult to learn everything in detail in advance, but you can’t do anything.

Bike from life . I used to know one professor who had only visitors in the wards, preferably from not-so-rich countries. Local students were not at all eager for him (word of mouth worked), and the newly arrived were easy prey. In addition, they could always be pressed on: you’ll work badly, drive you out of the department, don’t extend your visa, and roll back to your beautiful country.

Teacher or scientist?

Honestly, I am not very competent in this matter, so I will try to refrain from evaluations. I just want to say that there are different points of view on the mission of the university, and the concrete embodiment of this or that point of view can greatly influence both the position in the rating and the internal culture of the organization.

In the Soviet Union, science and education were separated from each other. It was considered that research institutes should be engaged in science, and the task of the university is to train students. At the same time, the same people could both teach and work in scientific research institutes, while the scientific research institutes themselves maintained contacts with both universities and industry.

Now we are trying to introduce the “Western model”, which consists in transferring research activities to universities. The idea seems to be viable, since it works on this very West (although they have “National Labs”, corporate research centers and other non-university offices), but on the whole is not very obvious. Proponents of the old system believe that you can’t do anything special with university students, because you need serious guys from research institutes who work there for a long time and are able to take on long-term projects. And the connection between the “leading edge” of science and the learning process can be accomplished by those part-timers from scientific research institutes conducting one or two classes a week at the university.

The reformers can say that the industry has already collapsed anyway, and, therefore, the three-legged table “Scientific research institute - university — factory” still does not have one support. In fact, universities are boiled in their own juice, and research institutes - in their own, and everywhere everything gradually rots. There is also a sweet dream that universities will earn on targeted research ordered by industry, but so far we have not seen any special results.

In this case, I don’t want to take sides, in their own way both are right. There is an objective separation between science and teaching, and how to combine these things is not always clear. A scientist can understand nothing in pedagogy and teach how God will lay heart to heart. He has no corresponding education. Moreover, he can sincerely hate teaching and teach classes anyhow, while serving a labor service. The teacher can be a brilliant story-teller, however, far from scientific work.

In my presentation in the bachelor’s degree, specialists are needed more, and in the master’s and post-graduate programs, scientists, but I will not insist. There are attempts to cross one with the other in the position of teaching professor, but this practice cannot be called generally accepted. Specifically, in my university, teaching is practically not valued in any way. Well, that is, the professor has little motivation, except for purely internal, to improve and polish his own courses. The prestige of the university, the receipt of grants and the career success of a scientist depend on scientific results, and not on success in the teaching field. I recently heard a similar assessment from a professor at a prestigious British university, so the situation is typical.

University rankings are also “sharpened” for the Western model of universities as research centers, and our teachers are not ready for this turn of events. It is necessary to understand that in scientific activity there are actually 5% of “science” and 95% of “activity”, that is, purely technical skills related to setting up a general scheme of work for writing articles, participating in conferences, establishing connections and fighting for grants. People may not believe in this scheme or may not be able to work in it (or it may be trivial not to have time, because the load of teaching and any bureaucracy is unreasonable). However, I think that, in general, we will move in this direction, because even if we assume that the Soviet system is more efficient, it is hardly possible to preserve it in the modern world: you either build a local paradis, or join the general system, if not the most reasonable. Anyway, participation in the global process will bring more fruits than proud effective loneliness.

English factor

We often like to complain that, say, universities of the former countries of the British Empire have an insurmountable linguistic advantage: they all quote, they all read, and we can only count on quoting by friendly Ukrainians, Belarusians and someone else in the same class. However, it is enough to look at the first hundred of the QS rating to recall the saying about a bad dancer, who also has innate features that prevent him from reaching the heights of skill. Therefore, the Germans, Japanese, Koreans, French, Chinese, Danes, Finns, Swedes and others cope with the language barrier, but we now can not.

But it is also impossible to deny the obvious. English language gives a lot of unobvious bonuses to the rating, to which no matter there is a simple normal student or employee, but which clearly contribute to his - rating - growth.
If you are writing an article about the subtleties of the syllable of a Japanese poet of the 15th century Sogi , it is quite reasonable to compose it in Japanese, imagining the typical reader to be an expert in medieval Japanese literature. And there are far fewer of them in the world than Chaucer’s experts and, accordingly, potential readers of an article about the features of the Canterbury Tales.

That is, a researcher engaged in a national culture is already in a notorious loss: his article will never publish a prestigious English-language journal and never quote thousands of other scientists. Of course, in the natural sciences this problem is not so acute, but the science is not limited to the natural sciences, and other examples can be invented. Let's say there is a huge collection of various statistical data collected in the USA. They are analyzed and quoted everywhere. However, many of them are going to meet local needs, and their use outside the country is simply a side effect: the language is English, the data are good. The Japanese also adore statistics and figures, but their research for local needs is, of course, published in Japanese, and hardly anyone will start to study them abroad. Requiring to publish the employment or demographic composition of any provincial peripheral prefecture in English is simply absurd; however, for Japan as a whole, it’s a minus

Recall also that an important part of the rating is “international connectivity,” that is, the proportion of foreigners among students and staff. And here any American-British backwater wins over many fine universities outside the English-speaking world. We will assume that researchers and intelligent students are more or less fluent in English. How many of them are willing to go to a little-known country and learn a completely new language to communicate outside the university walls? In general, of course, many, but in percentage terms it would not be so. The English-speaking world is more familiar (from films, books), more understandable. Even if it is a kind of self-deception, a false feeling (“I will go to Santa Barbara, I already know everyone there”), anyway, practice shows that people are easier to move to the United States or Australia than to Korea or even to France.

Bike from life . One of my comrades put it this way: “Canada is almost like Finland, only Finnish is not necessary to teach.” And he left Finland for Canada.

Little about fashion

Look again at the ratings. In them, a special place is occupied by quantitative indicators related to the number of publications and quotations, and of other similar “scientometric”. The compilers of the ratings, like the character of the anecdote, are looking for keys under the lamp, because it is light there. Bibliometric indicators are among the few means of an objective, numerical evaluation of the university’s contribution to science, so they are expected to be widely used. At first glance, everything is correct: if you publish in a prestigious journal and you are widely quoted, it means that your contribution to world science is significant. However, in practice, the methodology has to make all sorts of “corrections” and “coefficients” in order to take into account various nuances, so that, as a result, the initial simple idea turns out to be very vague.

For example, an average article is written in computer science by two or three authors, and biologists and dozens are not uncommon, because all involved are included in the author’s series, including washing flasks and laboratory technicians giving injections to mice. So, making injections to mice for three projects, you can quickly become a co-author of three articles. In computer science, the average article “lives” for several years, after which no one will refer to it. Physicists can still easily quote the original articles of Einstein and Bohr, that is, their citation indices continue to grow. The same physicists, in principle, are more willing to quote each other. It is estimated that physicists will have to collect 2073 citations for their work in order to enter the 1% of the most cited physicists of the world, and our brother informatics will have 149 citations to achieve the same goal. I do not know what it is connected with - with the greater friendliness of physicists or the fact that computer science is some kind of “umbrella” science, uniting too heterogeneous parts.

Of course, you can try to make "correction factors" and conditionally equate one and a half hundreds of computer science quotes to two thousand physicist quotes, but to achieve complete justice you will need hundreds if not thousands of coefficients. From a scientific point of view, the wars in Rwanda can be no less interesting than the wars of Britain and France, but it is not hard to guess that the "fashionable" countries cause much more interest. There are fashionable countries, there are fashionable themes, sub-themes and directions within sub-themes; While writing a paper on method X for solving problem Y, I can predict in advance how many citations this work can bring to me. Further, articles on fashionable themes are printed in fashion magazines, and for another narrow-profile theme of a fashion magazine there is no nature at all! So explain later what for the sake of you are published in the profile journal X, if it is unknown to the general public.

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I did not come across a lot of American universities, but the situation there is, according to my feelings, “middle to half”. Scholarships are not given to everyone, but more readily than the Japanese. Permanent position is difficult to earn, but still easier than in Europe. Attracting a grant is awesome, in many ways even steeper than scientific achievements. Americans in a personal summary list won grants next to the list of publications. Americans are well able to apply and sell themselves, this they will not take away. Well, in general, their culture in general encourages curiosity, knowledge. So among them there are many sincerely caring people. Although a huge social stratification also can not be forgotten. They told me about a rather decent, seemingly, American university, which is located behind a high, knotted fence in the center of some eerie ghetto. The government decidedthat local adolescents should be brought to people, and that a university is more profitable than a prison. Social project, so to speak. In Japan or Finland, such things are unthinkable.

Epilogue

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