What Do You Think About Education In American Universities?
The Academic Ranking Of World Universities recently posted the final results of their research on world university rankings. According to their rating, the first went to the universities of Unites States. Fifty four percent of the top 100 universities are in US, with Harvard retaining the top spot, followed by Stanford and the University of California at Berkeley.
According to the results, only three non American universities are in the top of 20. These are the University of Cambridge -4th, the University of Oxford – 10th, and Tokyo University – which took the 19th spot.
These statistics are published annually by China’s Shanghai Jiao Tong University and posted on-line, arousing the dissatisfaction of some countries’ educational departments. In an interview for Le Figaro, French Education Minister Valerie Pecresse said that these rankings show that French educational system needs some reforms to be more open to international standards, for foreign students, and also to be more autonomic.
These measures are indispensable for giving to France an international transparency and world attractiveness, Pecresse said.
According to EurActiv.com , the French Senate has proposed the development of a new European university ranking system to contradict the powerful Shanghai world ranking system , which is said to be in favor of English language speaking universities. The are anticipating the launch date of this new European system to be November of 2009.
Ranking criteria are based especially on university alumni winning Nobel prices, on articles published in Nature and Science, and also on number of articles indexed in Science Citation Index-Expanded and Social Science Citation.
France’s best university, Paris VI, is ranked 42nd on the list, and in total they have three universities among the top 100. In L’Express.fr we can also read that French syndicate la Fage contests the Chinese criteria of ranking:
The research is overestimated instead of pedagogical approaches, current publications are in English language magazines, educational establishments are not considered in context of their financial resources. All these points don’t allow to make the best judgments on pedagogical and scientific aspects of French universities.
According to Academic Ranking Of World Universities, Chinese universities continue to be outperformed by other Asian institutions in regional powerhouses like Japan, but have improved their showing since last year and now occupy the 18th spot in the Top 100 Asia Pacific Universities.
Despite of any statistics made by different institutions, students are making educational decisions depending on their own opinion about the universities. If the students don’t give up their studies and become great specialists, it means that the university has already accomplished the purpose it was created for.
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