Numbers that matter
The author is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute highbrow of biomedical engineering, general health and medicine during Boston University. He tweets @mhzaman
Earlier this week, Professor Mathias Egger, conduct of Swiss National Science Foundation and a renowned highbrow of epidemiology, common on amicable media a rather unfortunate minute he perceived from a highbrow during King Saud University in Riyadh. The minute was a elementary offer to Professor Mathias. If he were to change his tie on a integrate of comparison websites (such as highlycited.com and researchid.com) to King Saud, he would get adult to $175,000 (per year). The reason behind this offer is elementary — and has to do with university rankings. These dual websites (along with a few others) are used as a database by ranking agencies (and newspapers) to see how many rarely cited and peculiarity investigate papers are entrance from a given institution. So when someone were to demeanour adult a heading researcher in epidemiology on these websites, Dr. Egger’s name would come up, along with his tie with King Saud. This would boost a rankings of a university given his papers would be put in a mainstay of King Saud University. For those who emanate rankings, it wouldn’t matter if he ever did any work during King Saud or not. It would be one thing for Dr Egger to pierce to King Saud and do all of his work there, and minister to a educational enlightenment of a university. It’s utterly another to usually change a tie on a website and have a extraneous connection.
Dr Egger did a right thing by pity a minute on amicable media and lifted a doubt about firmness of general affiliations and collaborations. It is one thing to combine on intellectually abounding projects, utterly another to buy citations in sequence to boost reputation. Unfortunately, his box is not a usually one. we privately know colleagues, who had never listened of any university in Saudi Arabia, get identical proposals, with huge sums of income to change their tie temporarily in sequence to boost rankings. Newspapers in California have also created about these untrustworthy schemes. Unlike a emails from widows of Nigerian oil barons, that are spam, these proposals are real.
Apart from a inconceivable inlet of these proposals, there is a bigger question, of because rankings matter and for whom? And how distant are universities peaceful to go to in. adult on these metrics? It is maybe this doubt that we have to consider a bit some-more about in a context of Pakistan. Every other week or so, another tellurian ranking of university comes online. Our newspapers run a title about either any Pakistani university done it in a tip 500 or 1,000 of tellurian or informal rankings. we have created in a past about a injured metrics, though there is a deeper doubt here as well. How most should a rankings matter to incoming students? The rankings, detached from all their flaws, are formed on investigate metrics, publications, patents and citations. All of these factors are distant some-more applicable for connoisseur preparation and investigate than undergraduate preparation and teaching.
In a context of Pakistan, a connoisseur institutions are few, and a series of students intent in PhD turn investigate is most smaller than those who are intent during a bachelor’s level. Issues such as training quality, category size, importance on artistic thinking, gender balance, leisure of expression, opportunities for outward a category learning, ability to rivet in formidable debates and a campus where we feel intellectually and physically safe, regardless of a ethnicity, sacrament or worldview are distant some-more important. we consternation how many impending undergraduates in Pakistan unequivocally caring either a professors had fewer papers in a final year or more? It is not to contend that these numbers are irrelevant, it is simply to contend that there are some-more critical things.
Wouldn’t it be good if we are means to weigh a institutions on their ability to acquire new ideas and students from all backgrounds and opinions and safeguard that they are taught well, and done intent and socially unwavering adults in a protected environment.
Beauty pageants, either for people or institutions, might make a news, though they destroy miserably to concentration on what unequivocally matters in a end, a soul.
Published in The Express Tribune, Sep 19th, 2017.
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Article source: https://tribune.com.pk/story/1510046/numbers-that-matter/