<p>ARWU and Newsweek actually differ quite a bit. Their standards differ even though the results are usually within 10 places of each other. Those 2 rankings actually just so happened to agree with each other on a lot.
No, it’s basis is not completely off of Shanghai. Newsweek compared its rank to ARWU because ARWU is generally speaking the most prominent ranking (Cited by the Economist mutiple times. 2 days ago, I saw the Economist again cite ARWU in one of the articles about the America we’re entering and the increasingly global world.); however, their standards are still different. Obviously, both ranks have their own flaws, but so do others. At this time, we have to look at the more credible ones such as ARWU or Newsweek. Of course, we can look at others, but we should probably weigh in a bit more on ARWU or the more prominent ones. THES or Zhejiang for one of the less credible ones.
As a side note, I’m not sure whether you understand how professional publication system goes. My parents (with Phd) once explained it to me. Usually, you research in something unknown and work toward that direction. After hard work, you might find something “new” and give it to the PRO publishers(professionals only. Articles in Newsweek, Economist, or even Business Week for business doesn’t count). Once it’s turned in, a board of professionals will look at the material to make sure that it really is something and new and useful. Once the material passes the examination, the article is published. In other words, if something is published, the quality has to be up to the standard or else it wouldn’t even pass the examination process.</p>
<p>Yes, I agree peer evaluation and research are both important, but the one that you’re in particular citing is THES(referring to the UK colleges), which has about one of the most flawed peer review system you can find.
With that said, I agree that peer review is important, but not the only factor. These universities are called research universities for a reason- because they research! Furthermore, since the rankings specifically mentioned “staff and alumni” research, that includes quality work (refer to explanation) from people graduating from the school. In other words, the standards still evaluate the quality of the student graduating from that university and therefore we actually see what the person is like after coming out of school because let’s face it, a few elite professors can’t publish every article there is for their department and raise its rank. This criteria to me is more credible than peer review because peer review in its own nature is subjective and can’t be fairly evalauted because its more off feelings and “I think”'s.
Even though USN has a better peer review system, you should still notice that the peer review system is still recieving TONS of complaints and many people are deciding to not participate in it because USN has not changed the system after many years of protest. To give you an idea why I think the peer review shouldn’t be weighed as high (at least as high as you claim it should), think of our current world. We currently live in a mostly Eurocentric world where everything we learn and read is Western biased (even though some people don’t admit that). I’ve recently read an article that claims the world has not seen a power as dominant as America since the Pax Romana. That article itself and the general body of the world is Eurocentric where Western Empires dominate. Little do they know that there actually was a superior Han Dynasty in the Eastern world with a stronger military and economy than the Roman Empire during its period of prosperity. The Han Dynasty had calvaries over 100,000 and had superior technology such as the cross-bow (which is invented about EIGHT HUNDRED YEARS later in the Western world). These are all information that people wouldn’t know if they follow the Eurocentric world idea. Likewise, peer review has a similar flaw when the reviewers could be blindsided to another universities superiority in another area. Again, I believe peer review is important, but not the most important as the review itself likewise can’t tell you the quality of the people who graduate or how good the education is. In many ways, the peer review is a “I think”.
Some people suggest the best way to do the review is to tell the reviewers to personally look into detail of each university and then decide. Of course, while that method would produce superior results, it is far too difficult to carry out. </p>
<p>If you have a better idea at how to trully rank universities, tell me (peer review is clearly not the answer). By looking for a consensus among the more prominent rank compliers, we should at least be able to see a general idea of a how a university is truly ranked. If a university (random and not pointing at any particular university) given the following ranks- 2,17,29,34,37, 29, 39,38,43,42,40,39,73,67, I think it’s safe to guess that a university is ranked somewhere in between 30-45. </p>
<p>If a university doesn’t have a med school, there is nothing to be done. Sure, it might affect UT’s rank, but what do you want to do? Tell UT to build a med school? Not all universities are perfect with everything.
And nothing (including peer review) and tell us how the quality of the undergrad educ is like. The closest thing is probably looking at the quality of the student which is included in some of the more prominent international ranks.</p>
<p>Actually, UC Bekerkely’s student still has the edge. Our school has about 40 (2/3 of our top 10%) or so students going to UT Austin. Of the 60 who all qualified for UT Austin, only about 12 or so got into Berkeley and I’ll be the first one to tell you that the UC Berkeley kids are defitnitely a notch or two above UT Austin kids.</p>