UNSW massages the numbers

Numbers are malleable as universities and ranking agencies look for the best stories in the latest ranking malarkey.

UNSW takes refuge in the law of averages.

In today’s Higher Ed Daily Brief: UNSW’s ranking, playing with time, research stars

Dive, what dive?

UNSW was the only Australian university in the Times Higher Education top 100 to take a major dive in the latest rankings released yesterday. It dropped 11 places to 96th compared to its 85th position last year.

But not to worry. UNSW was able to elide this unfortunate outcome with a tweet yesterday that avoided the unmentionable while trumpeting that its average ranking “across the three main global league tables” rose seven places! We are left to assume these three rankings must be Times Higher Education, QS and the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU).

The average would have gone up because UNSW rose in the ARWU ranking this year. But it’s hard to check their figuring because the exact numerical ARWU ranking is only published for the top 100 ARWU universities, and UNSW falls just outside this elite grouping.

Rankings are increasingly important to universities looking for success in the international student market. And our guess is that international students are not fooled by this carry on.

Reality is overrated

University rankings agency Times Higher Education has joined its rival QS by declaring 2018 a leap year, in the sense that they believe it does not exist. Last year they published rankings for 2017. This year they dated them 2019.

Why would you do that? Probably something to do with the fact that people think a later date means that information is more current. After QS decided to make the move Times Higher probably felt it had to, otherwise it would risk losing web traffic. To avoid any odd gap in their ranking history the numbering of previous years has been adjusted.

For now, the only major ranking which is still rooted in a reality-based calendar is the Chinese-run ARWU. It’s latest figures are for 2018.

The question for Times Higher and QS is: where does this end? Surely it’s not too soon to be talking about the University of the 22nd Century? Come on, be the first.

Check out Australia’s top researchers

Australia’s top researchers are revealed in The Australian’s Research magazine — published this week — which is now online for all to access. The excellence of Australian researchers, universities and other research institutions is detailed, using big data techniques, in a way which has not previously been possible. We identify leading researchers and institutions in over 250 individual fields of research. The data is backed by profiles of leading Australian researchers which show what lies behind their success. Read the Research magazine here.