@rjkofnovi, I did, and in that sense, any ranking system will have a bias. They will be biased towards those criteria they care about more than other criteria.
But there’s no regional reason for the west coast schools to have more of what ARWU cares about than UMich.
deleted
ARWU has released its Alternative Ranking (Excluding Award Factor), and Michigan’s ranking rose from 22 to 12.
Michigan #12 and Duke #23. Now that makes more sense! You can see that Michigan gets a huge bump in the rankings after Nobel and Fields prizes are eliminated, more than any other elite school.
@UWfromCA, thanks for the link. It’s really revealing to see how much the regular ARWU rankings of some schools are propped up by a few Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals, some of which may be a century old. Without that “award factor,” Princeton drops from #6 in the regular ARWU to #20 in the alternative ranking, and the University of Chicago drops from #9 to #27.
^True. However, there is something to be said for being able to attract Nobel-calibre researchers. Also, ARWU assigns less weight to prizes that were awarded several years in the past.
I hope to see Duke rise up the rankings as its faculty gets the international recognition it so richly deserves. Two Nobel laureates (three if you count former post-doc Kobilka) in the last four years is nothing to scoff at. The investments that schools like Duke made in the early 80s are reaping rewards. The prizes have been dominated by a handful of institutions for too long (and the reason for this was probably more political than scientific). Duke, Michigan and Stanford are coming to the party in a big way now that the Ivy hegemony is diminishing.
^^^^Nobel prizes are wonderful and prestigious NerdyChica. However, there is much more to a university than just the life/physical sciences. Michigan is well rounded and highly regarded in all of its offerings. Did you see Duke’s place in the rankings that didn’t include the most prestigious awards? Still stellar of course, but not nearly as impressive.
I think universities that excel in the STEM fields, and have large research budgets, will do well in those international rankings, particularly in the future. Schools like Cal, Columbia, Cornell, Duke, Johns Hopkins, Michigan, Northwestern, Penn, UCLA, UCSD, UIUC, UDub, Wisconsin, WUSTL etc…
I suppose it’s a bit much to characterize schools like Ohio State, Penn State, Pitt, and Michigan State as “elite,” especially in a University of Michigan forum, but notice those schools also take a huge upward leap in the ARWU alternative rankings once the “award factor” is eliminated: Penn State +24 from #60 to #36; Ohio State +26 from #67 to #41; Pitt +27 from #70 to #43; and Michigan State +24 from #99 to #75. Global rankings of #36 to #75 are actually quite impressive given how many universities are out there, though perhaps not quite “elite.”
^^^^^That’s why I added “elite” to the sentence. 