Talk:College and university rankings/Archive 2

Apologies if this has been proposed before. The most important worldwide rankings are The Times, the ARWU and QS. Shouldn't they be listed in their own section at the beginning of the article? Current setup gives the same weight to all global rankings, which is simply not the way the world works. Ladril (talk) 18:16, 23 September 2019 (UTC)

Someone did to that after your proposal, and it seems logical. The probably is, people will try to edit their own rankings out of the larger list into the selective one - someone had just done that with the Leiden ranking, for example. If there is a fourth ranking that should be there as the most read and influential, it should definitely be CWUR. Cheers.

213.245.146.78 (talk) 19:16, 28 September 2019 (UTC)

"It should definitely." If there is something that should definitely be in the top category, there definitely should be a reliable source listing it alongside Times, QS, and Shanghai ranking. There is a source listing the Leiden ranking among those, so I would like to please request you do not take it out the "most prestigious" list again without proper justification. Ladril (talk) 13:59, 29 September 2019 (UTC)

The phrase "some sources also include the Leiden ranking" remained unsourced. I work with international Education for years, deal with dozens of these rankings every day and had never heard of the "Leiden ranking". I am sorry, but it just isn't one of the 3 or 4 top university rankings in the world. It is so obviously a very, very personal position of yours being defended here that if you add it again among the top rankings I will simply have to ask for external, formal intervention from Wikipedia moderators. Anyone who is somewhat familiar with the topic knows that a "Leiden ranking" isn't one of the top 3 or 4 university rankings in the world. 213.245.146.78 (talk) 20:24, 3 October 2019 (UTC)

You seem to be new to Wikipedia, and I understand (I was also new once). First, some practical advice. It's usually not a good idea to use your credentials as argument. First, because there is no way to know if you actually have them (there have been widely publicized cases of people pretending to have degrees they did not, for example). Secondly, there is a Wikipedia guideline about verifiability (WP:V), which means that what matters for the purpose of editing articles is whether you can show that your information is actually accurate according to third-party sources. Professional credentials almost always take second seat to this, so insisting on them is just wasting everyone's time.

Regarding your statement "The phrase "some sources also include the Leiden ranking" remained unsourced." Here is a sentence from one of the sources currently in the article:

"QS World University Ranking, THE World Ranking, ARWU, and CWTS Leiden Ranking are the leading university rankings frequently encountered in articles, newspapers, and promotional publications."^[1]

I will not revert your edit at this time (though I believe I have a pretty good case for doing it, and I make no promises about the future). I can only advise more careful reading of sources in the future, to avoid further misunderstandings. Ladril (talk) 17:39, 4 October 2019 (UTC)

A discussion is taking place to address the redirect Tier four university. The discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2021 January 26#Tier four university until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. Shhhnotsoloud (talk) 09:15, 26 January 2021 (UTC)

A discussion is taking place to address the redirect Tier three university. The discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2021 January 26#Tier three university until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. Shhhnotsoloud (talk) 09:15, 26 January 2021 (UTC)

A discussion is taking place to address the redirect Tier two university. The discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2021 January 26#Tier two university until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. Shhhnotsoloud (talk) 09:15, 26 January 2021 (UTC)

A discussion is taking place to address the redirect Tier one university. The discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2021 January 26#Tier one university until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. Shhhnotsoloud (talk) 09:18, 26 January 2021 (UTC)

Not withstanding the question of whether internet & blogosphere rankings are appropriate for a Wikipedia article on academic rankings (why not include football rankings as well then?), but the GLM rankings seem to be nothing more than a vehicle for the promotion of their TrendTopper MediaBuzz Reputation Management service for College and Universities (see here). Is this actually a legitimate ranking to include? Certainly it doesn't warrant the space it currently consumes in the article, and it is in definite need of a conflict-of-interest disclosure. CrazyPaco (talk) 02:43, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

IP edits from 70.116.22.174 suggest WP:PROMOTION is being violated by GLM. I removed the rankings because an organization ranking schools by a proprietary system and then selling services to improve an institution's place in those same rankings does not suggest a neutrality necessary for a non-biased, academically-honest ranking system. CrazyPaco (talk) 07:24, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

GLM uses citations from the top 5,000 global news print and electronic news media, as well as internet, etc. Academics have no problem here, in fact they see this as a non-unbiased snapshot since it cannot be influenced because the sample size is so large. See this article in the Harvard Crimson, http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=524332. The ranking, like all the others, is of a college or university's reputation. You can't influence a handful of deans (US NEWS), or change the rules of your SAT score statistics (Baylor, 2009), or enhance your admission selectivity by including spurious apps to increase your yield.

The Harvard article contains three relevant points:

1. "Indicating that prestige and media coverage seem to be correlated, six of the universities on the Global Language Monitor list also made the U.S. News top ten.",

2. "“Harvard is a brand name,” said Alex S. Jones, a former New York Times journalist who is the director of the Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics, and Policy. “It’s the oldest and best known university in the United States.”

3) "Indeed, the study seems to validate the Harvard Kennedy School’s recent decision to rebrand itself. Known as the Kennedy School of Government until last spring, the public policy and administration changed its shorthand so that it includes the word “Harvard.” The new shorthand reference...is serving to reinforce that we are part of the Harvard University family of premier graduate schools,” said Doug Gavel, a Kennedy School spokesman."

Also, colleges see no link between distinguishing themselves among their six or eight peers and the rankings themselves. Btw, every ranking service has related services from the College Board to US News.

In summary, GLM is using an established brand-ranking technique for ranking a college's most important asset: it's reputation.

If you feel you must cut the size of the citation, fine, but excluding it for issues that colleges find non-existent seems a bit much. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.116.22.174 (talk) 13:40, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

The Harvard Crimson is a student newspaper, and none of the points brought forward are relative to the conflict of interest criticisms or blatant WP:Advertising violations. Further, those points don't legitimize the rankings for use in an academic context. There has been no study to correlate academic reputation/ranking with media saturation and GLM's method is not established as it is proprietary and not public. No such correlation is provided by the Crimson article or by GLM on it website (the tiny 6/10 top 10 US News sample is not statistically significant). Further, because the methodology is not publicly available, it can not be scrutinized. There is no way to know whether a school's mentions in the media take into account positive of negative mentions of the institution, how the rankings correlate with university size or research scope, what media and on-line materials are screened (e.g. how is MySpace vs Pubmed utilized?), if the methodologies screen for multiple names or university nicknames, if the methodology accounts for geographical name/location that may confound results, if paid university advertisements are screened out, etc., etc., etc. In light of the comment about US News' rankings being in a "handful of deans", where in actuality 25% of the score comes from surveys sent to 4,273 presidents, provosts, and deans of admission, GLM'S TrendTopper methodology can only be assumed to be based on Paul JJ Payack's sole preference of which criteria is to be included in his secret ranking system, which does not seem open to scrutiny or criticism. Further, in the Crimson article, there is no mention that the rebranding decision by Kennedy had anything to do with the GLM ranking. If this student newspaper article is the basis for GLM's claim that "Harvard...[has] used the rankings as a validation of their recent reputation management decisions" that would be, and I'm being generous, a very misleading statement.

Please provide links or evidence that other rankings are selling services to institutions to enhance their place in those same rankings. I'd especially be interested to find out what services US News & World Report, The Center for Measuring University Performance, Forbes, Times Higher Education, etc have for sale to educational institutions in order to "enhance their standings" in their published rankings. It would be great to provide such information in the article as it would provide important conflict of interest criticisms in their respective sections of the article. Speaking of which, appallingly, in all of GLM's press releases, not once does it disclose that some of the ranked universities may actually be clients. I guess this is not surprising, as in other Global Language Monitor endeavors, "academics" do have large issues with the organization's use of its proprietary PQI algorithm in word counting, and it has been intensely criticized by linguists has even been referred to as a "complete fraud" by Geoffrey Nunberg of Cal-Berkley. The conflict of interest in GLM peddling its TrendTopper "Reputation Management Service" to improve an institution's place in its own proprietary rankings makes the objectivity of the ranking highly suspect, and the the IP edits emanating from GLM to whitewash any mention of those flaws does not aid its legitimacy. CrazyPaco (talk) 22:56, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Here's a suggestion: adding this to the Other Rankings area "Global Language Monitor ranks the top 200 colleges and universities according to their appearances in the global print and electronic media, the Internet, blogs and social media. In 2008, Harvard topped the Universities list, and Colorado College, the colleges list. In fall 2009, the University of Michigan and Wellesley College topped the lists."

This Reuters articles is making the rounds: http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE59T4FJ20091030.

CollegeCritic —Preceding undated comment added 13:56, 3 November 2009 (UTC).

I'll went ahead and added that, but I removed the ranking "winners" because that is not within the scope or appropriate context of the article. We'll see how this goes, but I don't see the benefit of continuing to include the questionable GLM TendTopper rankings (and providing them with their own internet Media Buzz) if these issues are going to be promptly edited out by GLM employees. Its own article reeks badly enough of WP:Advertising. However, here's a suggestion for GLM to make your rankings legitimate: Disclose your blatant conflict of interest in your press releases: that your actually sell a service to increase the rankings of the institutions and that some of the institutions in your rankings may be clients. Disclose the methodologies and criteria included in your rankings. CrazyPaco (talk) 22:56, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

As a long-time veteran of the tech battlefields of Silicon Valley, it does appear that GLM discloses the fundamentals of the PQI in a powerpoint presentation on its site. (See http://www.languagemonitor.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/trendtopper-mediabuzz-overview-1014081.pdf.) In SI parlance, all algorithms are by definition proprietary. It's the highly valued IP of the company. We will, however, disclose much more of our processes and methodologies if you sign a non-disclosure agreement (NDA). Typically NDAs do not allow you to disclose the IP to any other party for a minimum of 18 months to 3 years. The presentation on the site looks like it discloses the components of the methodology but, of course, not the precise formulas. Again, all standard in high tech. One other point, apparently the list of linguists appears quite impressive, but as you probably know, you could line up any number of SI luminaries to loudly and publicly disparage any number of other SI luminaries (e.g., Gates vs. Jobs, Ellison vs. McNealy, etc.) in the harshest possible language.

Evidently, there are strong wills on both sides of these arguments. I am new to this, so I might be naive here, but I modified the article in an attempt to create a balanced (and proper) encyclopedia entry. AnalyticsGuy (talk) 22:52, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

I noticed your balanced entry removes any inclusion of criticism. Despite how it is done in Silicone Valley, GLM with a business model based purely around its proprietary PQI and its obvious knack for self-promotion, should not expect to be viewed similarly to rankings performed in an academic manner, with full disclosure of methodology and the ability to test its methodology through replication, with data sets largely drawn from publicly available "Common Data Sets" for each university, and without the glaring conflict of interests. At least they state in their releases now that they do not influence rankings (possibly because of complaints lodged here?). That is an improvement to be up front with that disclosure, and I think we can give them the benefit of the doubt, although there is no way to actually verify it. In any case, they can in no way be considered academic rankings and the relationship of the rank to academics can be easily dismissed when you see the University of Phoenix is number 37 among universities, among other anomalies. What is good is that they seem to be downplaying the relationship to academics and concentrating on what they are actually measuring, but they are still asserting wild relationships between things like Harvard dropping in their PQI rankings and the hit on their endowment, which percentage-wise, was not much different than the hit every other university's endowment took and is still much large than all other universities. Such statements not only come off as ridiculous, especially when not supported by accompanying study to attempt to validate such a relationship, but will continue be a reason GLM is ridiculed in academic circles. They need to stick to the releasing their results and stop the hollow interpretations, which I assume, is to try make their results seem more interesting or valid. I'm fine with their rank of internet pervasiveness, which begs the question of whether they belong in this article at all (same for G-factor, etc), but if they try to pass it off as anything more it is not going to fly. It is fairly obvious where all the edits for GLM are coming from, and I highly caution about Wikipedia:Conflict of interest. CrazyPaco (talk) 01:01, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

I propose to include this new ranking system.

The World's Universities with Real Impact (WURI) ranking, developed by Hanseatic League of Universities and the Institute for Policy and Strategy on National Competitiveness (IPSNC), is a new system which aims to measure universities’ performance in creating value to society. Rather than relying on quantitative metrics, it relies on qualitative evaluation of innovative programs at universities. The ranking is composed of a global top 100 of "Innovative Universities" and top 50s in each of four areas: Industrial Application, Entrepreneurial Spirit, Ethical Value, and Student Mobility and Openness.^[1]

List of some reputable sources, press releases and related articles:

• UNITAR & Partners co-host launch of the 'World's Universities with Real Impact' (WURI) Ranking | UNITAR (unitar.org)^[2]
• A New WURI Ranking of Innovative Universities Released by Four International Organizations: HLU, UNITAR, FUS and IPSNC (prnewswire.com)^[3]
• South Korea's Research Institute, IPSNC, Shares Kaggle Data and Releases a New Ranking for Innovative Universities: World Universities With Real Impact (WURI) for 2020 (prnewswire.com)
• CKGSB Ranked Top 50 in the World's Universities with Real Impact (WURI) Ranking 2020 (prnewswire.com)
• WURI rankings: University of Split ranks 15th in ethics category | Croatia Week (crotiaweek.com)^[4]
• New global ranking positions SFU high for innovation, entrepreneurial spirit - SFU News - Simon Fraser University (sfu.ca)^[5]
• SFU named #1 in global university ranking for impact on sustainable cities and communities - SFU News - Simon Fraser University (sfu.ca)
• Anche il Franklin College tra le migliori università - Ticinonline (tio.ch)^[6]
• ULAB amongst world’s top 50 universities for innovation, creativity | Dhaka Tribune (dhakatribune.com)^[7]
• ULAB celebrates ranking among top 50 global universities | Dhaka Tribune (dhakatribune.com)
• ‘Media Studies departments should review and revise their curriculum every four years’ | Dhaka Tribune (dhakatribune.com)
• ULAB ranks among world’s top 50 universities for innovation, creativity | (bdnews24.com)
• ULAB celebrates achieving WURI ranking (newagebd.net)
• ULAB among world’s top 50 universities with real impact (newagebd.net)
• Trường ĐH Trà Vinh‎ vào top 100 của WURI Ranking 2020 - Báo Thái Bình điện tử (baothaibinh.com.vn)^[8]
• TVU - Tốp 200 đại học xanh, bền vững trên thế giới (nongnghiep.vn)
• Đại học Trà Vinh lọt vào top 100 của WURI Ranking 2020 (nongnghiep.vn)
• Đại học Trà Vinh đạt nhiều kiểm định chất lượng quốc tế (bnews.vn)
• Tra Vinh University named in 2020 World’s Universities with Real Impact rankings | Society | Vietnam+ (VietnamPlus.com)
• WURI랭킹, 국내외 대학 총장 25명 블라인드 평가… 종합 순위 스탠퍼드 '1위'·서울대 '15위' - 조선일보 (chosun.com)^[9]
• Incheon National University joins drive to innovate university ranking system (koreaherald.com)
• 서울여자대학교, 세계 혁신대학 윤리적 가치 부문 34위 랭킹 쾌거 (donga.com)
• "작은 지역대학의 반란? 지역사회 보듬으며 강해졌죠" - 조선일보 (chosun.com)
• 조선에듀 :: 프리미엄 교육전문 미디어 (chosun.com)
• 2020 WURI 세계혁신대학 서울대 '국내1위'.. 인천대 한국외대 톱3 - 베리타스알파 (veritas-a.com)
• 서울여대, 세계 혁신대학 2020 WURI 랭킹 ‘Ethical Value’ 부문 세계 34위 차지 < 대학뉴스 < 뉴스 < 기사본문 - 한국대학신문 - 409개 대학을 연결하는 '힘' (unn.net)
• INU aims to stand at center of Northeast Asian education (koreatimes.co.kr)
• FEU only PH institution in innovative universities list – The Manila Times (manilatime.net)^[10]
• FEU makes it to innovative universities global list; Stanford, MIT 1-2 | ABS-CBN News (abs-cbn.com)
• FEU Ranks 91st Most Innovative University in the WURI 2020 Global List | Tatler Philippines (asiatatler.com)

Press releases do little to convince us that a subject is noteworthy as they're obviously promotional. It's also impossible to evaluate any of these sources as you haven't provided links to any of them. But if they simply repeat what the ranking's publisher has said or what institutions included in the ranking have said then they do little to establish that the ranking is noteworthy.

You are also clearly engaged in an edit war to add this material and that's completely unacceptable; please revert your edit while it's being discussed.

Finally, you are also engaged in an edit war to add this ranking to the article of the institution at which you are currently a student; this is a clear conflict of interest. I strongly recommend you also revert that edit and take a few steps back from editing these articles to add this material. ElKevbo (talk) 17:23, 28 December 2020 (UTC)

As ElKevbo says, these all appear to be press releases. To establish notability you need actual articles written about the ranking in generally reliable, third-party sources. Not about how a local institution has done in the ranking (which is probably actually press-release churnalism) but about the actual ranking. Robminchin (talk) 06:13, 31 December 2020 (UTC)