Your opinion as to whether ARWU metrics “looks like” something or another is subjective at best and does not prove ARWU to be objectively better. And a consistently wrong survey is not better than anything a monkey can make by throwing darts on a board. It is still wrong.
I’m out of this thread. I’m bored.
Harvard. Ranked No. 1 in the world for “teaching.” It is to laugh.
Harvard itself doesn’t think it is any good at teaching. It is a big concern for them.
“You’d be stupid if you came to Harvard for the teaching,” said Mr. Billings, who will graduate this spring and then go to Oxford as a Rhodes scholar. “You go to a liberal arts college for the teaching. You come to Harvard to be around some of the greatest minds on earth.”
And that is pretty much how the thinking has gone here at Harvard for several decades. As one of the world’s most renowned research universities, Harvard is where academic superstars are continually expected to revolutionize their fields of knowledge. Cutting-edge research is emphasized, and recognized with tangible rewards: tenure, money, prestige, prizes, fame.
“It’s well known that there are many other colleges where students are much more satisfied with their academic experience,” said Paul Buttenwieser, a psychiatrist and author who is a member of the Harvard Board of Overseers, and who favors the report. “Amherst is always pointed to. Harvard should be as great at teaching as Amherst.”
As Professor Skocpol put it, “People at Harvard are concerned when they hear that some of our undergraduates can go through four years here and not know a faculty member well enough to get a letter of recommendation.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/10/education/10harvard.html