The beginning of the end of US dominance in engineering?

<p>Here is the information of world engineer school ranking in terms of schalor productivity: Performance</a> Ranking of Scientific Papers for World Universities. It is quite a surprise that Tsinghua University of PRC beats all the major US engineer schools for both current and 11 year peer review paper publications. The more startling is that Tsinghua University also beats UCB and Stanford for papers in high impact journals. This school popped into the world scene just 30 years ago. These rankings are all objective measurement and real. The data appear quite ominous for the prospect of US leadership in this vital area. </p>

<p>Unless we take some decisive and dramatic measures to rescue our decline, 2 or 3 decades later, we may have to look to China for the best engineer education. For those administrators in higher education institutes and politicians, it is now time to wake up: To make more funding for our engineer programs, to start strict merit based hiring and admission process, and punish institutes that abuse the system with anti-merit agenda (which I believe quite unlikely, unfortunately).</p>

<p>there was recently a washington post article discussing how engineers and professionals coming out of highly-rated universities in India are finding themselves very ill-prepared for the modern job market. their education is based entirely in textbooks, theory, and tests, leaving them unable to perform the tasks demanded of them in the real world, especially to American employers. The education is very similar in China, and I expect the same problems to arise for graduates of Chinese universities. A very competitive culture requires a very consistent standard upon which to measure people by. Children in China and India have spent their lives being prepared to measure very highly on that standard. This standard, however, in being easily measurable, has forfeited the intuition, finesse, and skill which American education still enables. </p>

<p>In China and India, there is no need for ECs. No recs. No essays. Just your college entrance exams. In college, there are performance exams. Upon excelling at these, students are expected to be able to instantly take their book learning and apply it to their tasks in work. They have had great difficulty in this.</p>

<p>The United States college system will continue to be the envy of the world and will continue to have the kind of educational system which will produce the best workers in the world for years and years to come.</p>

<p>IBfootballer, sorry, it appears that you are talking something irrelevant here. These data are peer review publications from the faculty of the universities, and are real world stuffs, not college entrance examinations. Most of the prestige of an institute is based on these innovations. In this real world, the Indian university is nowhere to be found near the top. The highest Indian universities are IIS and IIT. They rank 121 and 180, respectively. They are not very productive and worth not much an attention. Tsinghua appears a completely different case.</p>

<p>stupid question…
when i follow your link, it puts several American universities very comfortably ahead in total score rankings…
are we still doomed?</p>

<p>perhaps I can explain why this new university has surged towards the top.</p>

<p>Its graduate students have excelled tremendously when they have returned home after completing studies at American institutions.</p>

<p>This is pure conjecture, but if true (as is equally likely to your pessimistic observations), it means that American colleges and American students will find themselves in demand for years to come.</p>

<p>Moreover, when academics seek a forum or use for their studies, they frequently turn to American and European corporations for employment. Making America more money in corporation profits and from sales of their product in American markets.</p>

<p>higher education council of taiwan + unnecessarily duplicative/overlapping categories that emphasize quantity over quality = bespoke tailored rankings.</p>

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<p>Now, I’ve always been in favor of the strict, merit-based thing. That being said, is the material you have posted not talking about the publications of faculty? I don’t think the state of either our graduate schools or our faculty is half as worrisome, no?</p>

<p>Foreign nations have outscored the US in a number of rubrics for many years. During the Cold War, the Soviet Bloc schools all were geared to turn out rocket scientists, and therefore their secondary school students had a level of physics capability that US schools never achieved, even when they had similar goals. However, the US has always produced more innovators than other countries. So an Indian engineer may be capable of design and function, and creating something much like what has come before, and a very good example of it, but it is traditionally western eduction, and US in specific that produces the type of lateral thinkers that produce new and innovative ideas that lead to large shifts in our understanding of science and engineering.</p>

<p>The link ranks publication quantity and quality (citation) from an institute, presumably mostly from its faculty. Our professors worry about their own funding and publications, not scientists in China. I believe that they welcome the rise of institutes from China because it may stimulate the funding here. </p>

<p>Our innovators, majority of them, are foreign born. As far as our economy and living standard are OK, we will attract top scientists. But that may change if our economy goes down.</p>

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Objective, absolutely. But real? I don’t see a case for that.</p>

<p>Nobody agrees on the proper way to calculate citation indices for individual faculty members, let alone for entire departments.</p>

<p>For now at least, I would not worry too much about Tsinghua University, or any Chinese university for that matter. My parents are from China. I go back every year and have seen much corruption there, including academic corruption. With rampant plagiarism and no respect whatsoever for intellectual property rights, there is not much incentive for intellectual ingenuity and creativity there. Don’t believe me? See how many engineering firsts from China you can name. Or try this: check out the Chinese army’s most advanced weapon systems. Most, if not all, of them are results of reverse engineering of foreign products. Their J11 fighter, for example is an almost exact copy of the Russian Sukhoi 30. </p>

<p>Still don’t believe me? Here is a story with a bit of personal touch. China has its own college rankings and Tsinghua University is usually ranked number one. The guy behind the most famous of those rankings happened to be in the same squad with my dad when they were both on a Chinese army farm 40 years ago and, guess what, that guy later on attended none other than the very same Tsinghua University . It was only recently that it was reported that he had been accused of fraud: He had allegedly received large sums of money from a certain university before that university’s ranking got miraculously boosted in his widely published rankings. </p>

<p>I’d also venture a guess as to why a Taiwan institute sponsored by business people would rank Tsinghua University so high while U.S. News and World Report ranks it at only 56th. It should be clear to everyone that any war with Mainland China would negatively impact the interest of these Taiwan businessmen. Taiwan has recently been trying hard to quell the danger of war with Mainland by pursuing a sort of detente with the Chinese government. The Chinese government is led by Mr. Hu Jintao. And Mr. Hu Jintao graduated from … You guessed it, Tsinghua University! :)</p>

<p>To evaluate an individual faculty by citation alone might be problematic because it will largely depend on the number of scientists in his field and how active the field is. However, low average citations per faculty for the entire department will reflect badly on the strength of the department. The ranking appears to contain no human judgment intervention, and is, as some of you agree, objective.</p>

<p>Just because something is objective doesn’t mean it’s meaningful.</p>

<p>One problem I can identify immediately is that the journal impact factors used come from the Thompson Scientific numbers. These journal impact factors vary somewhat by field, so the subfield composition of a department could strongly influence the department’s “overall” impact factor in a way that has nothing to do with the department’s quality.</p>

<p>As a problem that’s easier to identify, even given no information about the factors involved, consider what would happen to the ranking if the factors were weighted differently. The weighting is totally arbitrary – there’s no obvious reason to weight h-index at 20 and number of articles in the current year by 10.</p>

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<p>This actually was my reaction too, though not stated. I think the question that titles this thread might require a very deep understanding of what’s going on in the engineering field and extremely careful analysis of the figures provided. I don’t know how many people posting here are engineers or are well-acquainted with what’s going on up there. </p>

<p>For the record, I don’t even feel qualified to talk about the “state of United States mathematics.”</p>

<p>I agree with cubism4nerds the most.</p>

<p>Although I can’t follow the link to the rankings (server is too busy at the moment), I would strongly urge you to take rankings published by Taiwan “Educational Councils” with a grain of salt, especially if you would like to use it as a basis to judge Mainland schools. I think if THES was to confirm this finding, I would place a lot more weight on it than this ranking, which can easily be biased due to unforeseen personal or academic interests…</p>

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<p>Yeah yeah yeah…hint much?</p>

<p>I am really disappointed by the quality of the comments here. A lot of them seem not understanding the academic evaluation process. Regardless of subfields, when an entire engineer school (which includes all the subfields) has low citation per faculty ratio, it means its faculty research not well regarded by its peers. In most of the schools, including MIT, Stanford, UCB and many others, publication impact factor is one of the most important factors in obtaining tenure and promotion, second only to funding. This ranking appears to be the most relevant of all rankings I have seen so far. Some of the comments here appear making up story and creating sensational fairy tale. </p>

<p>If you want to be a willful ignorant, it is up to you. Just don’t be surprised that your R&D engineering job will go to China 2 decades later.</p>

<p>^^^ “Some of the comments here appear making up story and creating sensational fairy tale”?</p>

<p>I am not sure what harvardfan is talking about, but here below are web connections to the Wikipedia page about the rankings of Chinese universities I referred to above. </p>

<p><a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_university_ranking_(Chinese_Academy_of_Management_Science[/url])”>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_university_ranking_(Chinese_Academy_of_Management_Science)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Here is a report about the alleged fraud by Mr. Wu shulian who’s the publisher of those rankings:</p>

<p>[Global</a> Times - University ranking agency in bribes row](<a href=“http://en.huanqiu.com/www/english/Language/2009-05/429667.html]Global”>http://en.huanqiu.com/www/english/Language/2009-05/429667.html)</p>

<p>Here is an article touching on the lack of respect for intellectual property rights in China:</p>

<p>[How</a> to Protect Intellectual Property in China : Industrial Market Trends](<a href=“http://news.thomasnet.com/IMT/archives/2008/05/how-to-protect-intellectual-property-preventative-action-fraud-counterfeit-crimes.html]How”>http://news.thomasnet.com/IMT/archives/2008/05/how-to-protect-intellectual-property-preventative-action-fraud-counterfeit-crimes.html)</p>

<p>Here are just a few of the many reports on rampant plagiarism in China. The first one mentions that a Chinese study found that 60 percent of PhD candidates admitted to plagiarism and bribery:</p>

<p>[Research</a> fraud rampant in China | csmonitor.com](<a href=“http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0516/p01s03-woap.html]Research”>Research fraud rampant in China - CSMonitor.com)</p>

<p>[Plagiarism</a> in China fuels debate on intellectual theft | csmonitor.com](<a href=“http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0122/p16s02-legn.html]Plagiarism”>Plagiarism in China fuels debate on intellectual theft - CSMonitor.com)</p>

<p>[Yale</a> Professor at Peking U. Assails Widespread Plagiarism in China - Chronicle.com](<a href=“http://chronicle.com/news/article/3678/yale-professor-at-peking-u-assails-widespread-plagiarism-in-china]Yale”>http://chronicle.com/news/article/3678/yale-professor-at-peking-u-assails-widespread-plagiarism-in-china)</p>

<p><a href=“http://english.people.com.cn/90001/90776/****2/6654197.html[/url]”>http://english.people.com.cn/90001/90776/****2/6654197.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Plagiarism and scientific misconduct? These sound quite familiar here, too. If you go to NIH science integrity office, they probably will show you a long list of names of US scientists under investigation or found guilty of misconduct or fraud. Just 2 years ago, Journal of Cell biology claimed that 40% of the manuscripts submitted from the US contained inappropriate manipulation of the data. Student plagiarism is wide spread here, too. It happens in some of my classes. All these bad things are not unique in China. </p>

<p>However, this is not the point. The point is that they (at faculty level) published so many peer review articles and articles in high impact journals in recent years, beating some of the best engineering schools in the US. Because only new discovery or innovation is publishable in these journals, it means that they are now catching up on us in innovation. This is alarming.</p>

<p>Not to worry. The US trains more lawyers and financial professionals than any other society in history.</p>

<p>When the bad guys show up with force fields and death rays, we can simply negotiate them into surrender. Or perhaps con them into a deal on a derivative investment instrument. Oh wait… that is why they are invading us.</p>

<p>Sorry for the bleed over fom another thread.</p>

<p>Very well. Which peers evaluated them? What criteria were their evaluations based on? What do other ratings say?
Moreover, “new discovery” is a very flexible term. </p>

<p>You are committing the logical fallacy of seeing one set of data and using it to draw a conclusion far beyond its scope. You cannot conclude the downfall of the American university system from this single data set, which, by the way, rates several top American and Western universities far above Chinese ones in total score.</p>

<p>And corruption in American education is not nearly as endemic as it is in asian universities. Peoples’ parents don’t bribe teachers for high marks. They don’t use connections to cover up test cheating. It is far, far worse in places like China, India, and Japan.</p>

<p>havardfan says: “All these bad things are not unique in China.” </p>

<p>There is bad, and then there is bad. Anyone who would compare America to China as harvardfan did, well, it simply shows the person’s total ignorance about what’s going on in China. To quote harvardfan himself: If you want to be a willful ignorant, it is up to you."</p>