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Should we believe the Shanghai ranking ?| old_uid | 5542 |
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| title | Should we believe the Shanghai ranking ? |
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| start_date | 2008/11/07 |
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| schedule | 16h15 |
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| online | no |
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| summary | A group belonging to the Jiao Tong University in Shanghai annually publishes a ranking of the 500 best universities in the world. This is now famous "Shanghai ranking". This ranking seems to be frequently used in many Universities and is quite often evoked in public debates concerning universities all around the world. Its influence is crucial in countries experiencing drastic reforms of the public university system, as is the case throughout Continental Europe. In such a context, it is important to assess the meaning, the reliability and the validity of the information provided by the Shanghai ranking before using its results. The aim of this non-technical talk will be to give a detailed critical analysis of the Shanghai ranking from the point of view of someone working in the area of multiple criteria decision making (MCDM). Such the ranking may indeed be viewed as classical exercise in MCDM. Its aim is to rank alternatives (universities) taking several criteria (the various dimensions used in the Shanghai ranking). Whereas. Operations Researchers may not be experts in the evaluation of research or of educational systems, they clearly have their word to say concerning the way information is collected coded and aggregated in the Shanghai ranking. Our analysis of the Shanghai ranking will deal with the following points: · Is the family of dimensions considered a "consistent family of criteria"? · What is the quality of the information that is used in the ranking? · What is the validity of the recoding of the data that is performed? · What is the quality of the aggregation method that is used? · What to think of the alleged objectivity of the ranking? · How to interpret the final result? We will show that on most of these points, the work of the authors of the Shanghai ranking does not follow what is usually considered as the "good practice" in the area of MCDM. This will lead to critical analysis of the ranking. We will also try to analyze why this ranking has quickly gained such popularity in spite of its many drawbacks. We will suggest several avenues of research in order to reach a more desirable situation. The results presented here follow from a joint work with Philippe Vincke, ULB. |
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| responsibles | Hill, Placido, Cozic |
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