DHAHRAN, 13 November 2007 — In a place such as a university, where students are constantly graded and even professors are identified as “lecturer, assistant, associate,” it is not surprising that these institutions of higher learning have begun competing for a presence on one of several international “rankings.” The organizations publishing these ranking believe that since the world is moving toward globalization, then institutions of higher education should be forced to recognize that they are competing on a global stage.
“The health of every country’s university system has a direct bearing on the economic and social prosperity of the nation and its future. But universities are paradoxes of archaism and modernity, encapsulating intellectual liberalism in organizational conservatism. They fiercely defend their right to govern their own affairs, while demanding public support through taxes and tuition fees. They have excelled at defining their own missions, identities and concepts of academic quality and value,” wrote Peter Hirst on the University Metrics website — www.universitymetrics.com.
He continued, “Universities, however, are not immune to the forces of globalization that are shaping the rest of the world. The countries whose university systems have dominated the last century(ies) cannot safely assume that this dominant position can be maintained. Nor should they assume that the form and function of universities in the next century will follow the norms and practices of the last one. The development of metrics and benchmarks is a significant step on the road to analyzing and understanding the performance of any organization, and universities are no different.”
The “G-Factor International University Ranking” from University Metrics relies on a form of web-metrics called the G-Factor measurement. This is determined through using the Google search engine to search “on every leading university’s website for links to the websites of other leading universities and count the total number of such links.” University Metrics ranks 300 international universities based on the G-Factor. No university in the Middle East is on that list.
There is another international ranking, the Shanghai Jiao Tong University Index. This index is a ranking of the world’s Top 500 universities based on a variety of criteria that are entirely research based. It makes no distinction for activities other than those associated with research and tends to reward past achievements, rather than current accomplishments. Outside of such criticism, the index is considered to be unbiased. Again, no institute of higher education in the Middle East is included in the this index.
Last week, the fourth edition of The Times Higher-QS World University Rankings were published. Universities in the US and UK took the Top 10 places. The Top 200 universities on the list are in 28 countries, with four from the developing world: Two in Brazil, one from Mexico and, for the first time, an African university, Cape Town, in 200th place.
The Times’ rankings are based on the opinion of 7,000 active academics and graduate recruiters, alongside quantitative data on research impact, staff and student numbers and the universities’ levels of internationalization. The universities’ rankings depend on a comparatively small number of simple measures. However, the Times asserts that the “top few are excellent on all the criteria we use, including those that reflect research excellence, teaching quality, graduate employability and attractiveness to students.”
The publication did admit though that, “The methodology we use is designed mainly to capture excellence in multipurpose universities in the rich world. We are seeking better ways to measure higher education in developing world countries, and for ways of comparing the achievements of specialist and postgraduate institutions with those of full-spectrum universities.”
With the enormous contributions of Islam to fields such as mathematics, medicine and astronomy, it is depressing to see that universities in the region are not ranked highly internationally. This is in large measure due to the meager funds spent on R&D in the region, a culture that discourages independent thought and creativity and outdated educational infrastructure and policies. If the Middle East is to play a significant role in the world’s information economy it is essential that regional decision makers have a greater understanding of exactly what is required for higher education to be considered “World Class.”
The faculty and administration at King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals (KFUPM) are aware of the new international rankings. Although KFUPM is recognized as the top men’s university in Saudi Arabia, last year the university administration began to pay greater attention to the school’s international reputation.
KFUPM (www.kfupm.edu.sa) decided to initially concentrate on improving its ranking in the global virtual community of the World Wide Web. The Cybermetrics Lab (CINDOC), a unit of the National Research Council (CSIC), the main public research body in Spain, maintains the Webometrics ranking of world universities. It offers information about more than 3,000 universities according to their web presence — a computerized assessment of the size and sophistication of the institution’s website, the number of that university’s publications and scientific papers published on the web and the international visibility of this knowledge.
It should be noted that the assessment uses academic institutions’ presence in cyberspace to create the ranking rather than examining the brick and mortar universities. According to the website, “Webometric indicators are provided to show the commitment of the institutions to web publication and to the worldwide Open Access to knowledge.”
The Webometrics Ranking is built from a database of over 11,000 universities and more than 5,000 research centers. The Top 3,000 universities are shown in the main rank, but even more are covered in the regional lists. Institutions from developing countries benefit from this policy as they obtain knowledge of their current position even if they are not World-Class Universities.
The ranking started in 2004 and is based on a combined indicator that takes into account both the volume of the web contents and the visibility and impact of these web publications according to the number of external inlinks they received. The ranking is updated every January and July, providing web indicators for universities and research centers worldwide.
The Webometrics ranking combines a variety of indicators such as the number of pages identified by search engines, the number of unique external links received and the number of “rich files” generated by a university. It is fair to point out that this ranking is heavily focused on research and would say little about accomplishments that might have a limited web impact such as excellence in teaching or number of international students.
KFUPM has steadily risen up the Webometrics ranking. The university was ranked 1681 in July 2006, 1592 in January 2007 and 1128 in July 2007. It is now the top-ranked university in the Middle East. In explaining the reasons for such a high jump in ranking in a very short period of time, Dr. Sadiq M. Sait, director of ITC at KFUPM commented:
“KFUPM is a leading research and teaching-intensive university in the Kingdom. The Information Technology Center (ITC) aligned its efforts with the goals set by the Rector, Dr. Khaled S. Al-Sultan, to contribute to the Open Access Initiative (OAI) by sharing teaching material and research publications, thereby, making them highly visible via the World Wide Web.”
The goal of the Open Access Initiative is free, immediate, permanent, full-text, online access, for any user, web-wide, to digital scientific and scholarly material. To raise its Webometrics ranking KFUPM has improved its web presence, both in terms of volume and quality. The KFUPM website now includes documentation from courses and seminars, research content, a variety of publications and the website’s navigation has been enhanced.
The open courseware site at KFUPM (http://ocw.kfupm.edu.sa) has grown rapidly with the current list totaling more than 600 courses. The site provides free online access to course material from a range of academic disciplines, such as management, engineering, computer science, basic sciences and humanities. This material includes course syllabi, presentations, assignments, and supplementary course material. Placing this information on the Internet has proved not only popular but has also raised KFUPM’s web presence and helped raise its Webometrics ranking.
CINDOC hopes that Webometrics rankings will provide extra motivation to researchers worldwide for publishing more and better scientific content on the web, making it available to colleagues and people wherever they are located. And while CINDOC advises candidate students not to use Webometrics data as the sole guide for choosing a university, the organization does point out that a top position in the rankings means that the institution has a policy that encourages the use and development of new technologies, while also allocating the resources for their adoption.