After seeing this list, I agree.
Guy
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Iâve recently started my PhD at nccu and Iâm pretty happy with the quality of the program so far (though itâs my first semester so only about a month in at this point)
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Enjoy your honeymoon!
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Hey itâs better than hating the program right at the outset. That would be really bad!
Guy
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Sunken cost fallacy got me. I should have transferred
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Absolutely. For example, when acceptance rates are weighed heavily, universities are motivated to increase application numbers from people they are unlikely to accept, because that decreases their acceptance rate. Universities that efficiently recruit only the type of students they plan to accept are punished. This has been a real ethical problem among university admissions departments in the US.
University rankings are mostly a garbage concept, anyway, but good luck convincing anyone in Asia of that.
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And here is Exhibit A, referencing Beijingâs Tsinghua University (not to be confused with NTHU in Taiwan):
https://twitter.com/Joel_P_Atkinson/status/1585552296988901377
Guy
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THE is pure bs. You need to actively try to be this bad and even then itâs not easy. One example is Pen State that is apparently worse than 12 Chinese unis including prestigious unis such as Harbin University, Huazhong University of Science and Technology and TongJi University. I rest my case.
One more reason why Chinese universities donât deserve to be considered in these rankings. Bloody hell!
Guy
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I value my unranked technical BTEC over my more formal degrees. That being said, my alma maters (BA, Masters of Science, and executive educationâall in top 50 and some top 10 and 20 globally). But technical and hands-on shitâway more important than paper.
Worked in a prestigious uni some years back and butted heads with some of Macronâs asshole court favorites.
I was invited this year to participate in the survey element of the THE ranking process. Not sure if itâs that much of an honor (around 30,000 to 40,000 respondents each year, so likely more profs are invited, but donât complete the survey).
Weâre asked to provide several lists of top 15 universities for research or teaching, based on our overall assessment of universitiesâ reputation in our field, as well as based on our personal experiences/connections and other factors. Other questions evaluate the degree to which certain aspects influenced our choices.
Frankly speaking, it was a little bit challenging to come up with the names of universities that are outstanding in my particular field. It certainly took much more than 15 minutes, which is the time frame that is suggested for completing the survey. To do so, I went back to look at the affiliations of some high impact and quality papers that Iâve reviewed or that I have read in the process of connecting research with the past year or so. This part of the process is entirely subjective, and is very open to manipulation according to which schools you hope to promote, such as your own uni. However, there are more objective measures that are used to come up with the final ranking.
In a way, and itâs likely intentional, each respondent represents a fairly niche segment of academia. As such, quite a few schools that I recommended would not be known to researchers outside of my field.
(Sort of) glad to know my uni is in the top 10 in Taiwan (2022), at least in terms of the specific indicators it decided to release. As such, the school advertises a bit too much. First year students were surprised the school was ranked that high, which was an adorably hilarious response.
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