Recently, the news that Chinese University will withdraw from the World University Rankings has aroused social concern. Some media have previously reported that the news has been confirmed from authoritative sources. However, a Red Star News reporter learned from a staff member of the Evaluation research center of Chinese University that the matter has not yet been finalized.
In fact, some domestic 985 universities will withdraw from the world university rankings, which is not a vacuum. It is reported that Nanjing University has made it clear that the school development and discipline construction will no longer use international rankings as an important construction goal, and Lanzhou University will no longer participate in the world university rankings.
Some education experts explained that the current world university rankings made by some international institutions, based on the evaluation method, do not match the construction direction of the mainland's "double first-class" universities, and some universities blindly focus on the "rankings" may have an adverse impact.
On April 25, when General Secretary Xi Jinping inspected Renmin University, he stressed that the mainland has a unique history, unique culture and unique national conditions, and the construction of a world-class university with Chinese characteristics cannot follow behind others and draw a gourd, simply using foreign universities as a standard and model, but must take root in the land of China and walk out of a new road of building a world-class university with Chinese characteristics.
So, how should Chinese universities be scientifically and effectively evaluated?
Image according to Visual China
flaw
Attaching importance to scale and quantity, ignoring connotative development, ranking batons can easily cause homogenization of colleges and universities
Zhou Guangli, executive director of the Evaluation Research Center of Chinese Min University and professor of the School of Education, has long studied the construction and evaluation of world-class universities, and he has a unique insight into whether the world university rankings can become the basis for dynamic monitoring and evaluation of the construction of "double-first-class" universities in the mainland.
In a paper led by Zhou Guangli, "The Construction and Evaluation of World-Class Universities: International Experience and Chinese Exploration", this issue is discussed in detail.
Zhou Guangli mentioned in the study that at present, the third-party evaluations that have a greater impact in China's "double first-class" construction include: the subject evaluation of the Degree Center of the Ministry of Education, the top 1% subject of the Basic Science Index (ESI) in the United States, the THE World Higher Education Ranking published by the British Times, the QS World University Rankings released by the Quacquarelli Symonds Group in the United Kingdom, and the U.S. World University Rankings published by U.S. News and World Report. ARWU Academic Rankings of World Universities released by Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China.
The assessment positioning of these assessment bodies varies. Among them, the subject evaluation of the Degree Center of the Ministry of Education aims to monitor the quality of postgraduate education in China, the ARWU ranking of Shanghai Jiao Tong University is a by-product of monitoring the construction effectiveness of the "985 Project", the THE, QS and U.S. News World University Rankings in the United Kingdom are designed to provide an easy reference for students and parents to choose a study abroad destination, and the ESI aims to reveal the development trend of science and the research frontiers of 22 disciplines for scholars.
According to public information, there are currently four world university ranking systems with greater influence, namely QS, THE, U.S. News and ARWU. The basic situation and ranking indicators of the four ranking systems are shown in the following figure:
Click to enlarge to view, the picture is from Zhou Guangli et al.'s paper "Construction and Evaluation of World-Class Universities: International Experience and Chinese Exploration"
Zhou Guangli's paper pointed out that the shortcomings of the four world university rankings include: the ambiguity of the weight setting of the ranking indicators; the emphasis on quantitative indicators, without taking into account non-quantitative indicators; the emphasis on "input-output" evaluation, ignoring the "development process" evaluation; the emphasis on scale and quantity, ignoring connotative development; and the emphasis on science and engineering universities and the contempt for humanities universities. The baton of the ranking results is easy to cause homogenization of universities and aggravate the Matthew effect of university development.
Chu Zhaohui, a researcher at the China Academy of Educational Sciences, pointed out in an interview with Red Star News that one of the problems in these indicators is that some items and citations have a large gap in weight, but they must use a unified standard, which is actually unreasonable.
Chu said the rankings assume that universities have the same standard. However, truly first-class universities do not have the same standards. Truly first-class universities have different first-class universities, first-class universities with their own characteristics, and cannot be ranked by the same standard. Therefore, this ranking usually does not receive much attention internationally, at most as a reference.
Cheng Fangping, a professor and doctoral supervisor at the School of Education of Chinese Min University, who was an expert at the University Evaluation Center of the Ministry of Education, also said in an interview with Red Star News that there are many types of universities, including comprehensive universities and professional universities, which are ranked in a standard, the basic logic does not make sense, and it is not conducive to the development of higher education. Even similar universities have incomparable aspects, the natural sciences have standards, but culture, philosophy, language, religion, etc. can not be compared. At the same time, there is no comparison between universities in different regions, and universities in Egypt and the United States cannot be compared, and universities in the humanities and social sciences in China and France cannot be compared.
For example, Cheng Fangping said that Harvard University, a world-class university, initially regarded Humboldt University in Germany as a model, but what made Harvard University "become Harvard" was that Harvard University later relied on its own judgment of the university and developed according to the school conditions. Egypt's Cairo University may not be as strong in science and technology as American universities, but it still has a unique value in studying Egypt's indigenous culture. Therefore, there can be no only one criterion for university evaluation.
Cheng Fangping said that the current world university rankings are often affected by political factors, Western famous universities are sought after, and there are also factors that have ignored localization and school conditions in the past. University evaluations should have three indicators: science, culture and experience. Cheng Fangping explained that the humanistic factors and educational experience of many colleges and universities in the world cannot be ignored. Some experiences are useful in this school, not necessarily in other schools. Currently, world university rankings are misguided by the scientism that comes with standardization. Therefore, these rankings cannot be used as an authoritative reference for the evaluation of universities.
Negative effects
"Foreign indicators" are rampant, and some colleges and universities run schools on "standards" and ignore the laws of education
Zhou Guangli and others introduced in the article that although the United States has been carrying out university rankings for more than 100 years, the World University Rankings are the creation of Chinese, and its original intention is to measure the construction effectiveness of the "985 Project". The positive role of the World University Rankings is mainly reflected in three aspects: it provides an assessment method and evaluation system for the quality of university education, which is conducive to stakeholder decision-making; it provides a window to show the strength of universities and promotes competition among universities around the world; and the university rankings play a baton role and promote the global spread of the comprehensive research university model.
However, he also pointed out that a prominent problem in China's current "double-first-class" construction is the proliferation of "foreign indicators". Some universities run schools against the 4 World University Rankings. These ranking institutions have also found business opportunities in China's "double first-class" construction, and have adjusted their service orientation, with China as the main business market, and have the potential to fully control the evaluation discourse power of Chinese universities. The proliferation of "foreign standards" has seriously misled China's "double-first-class" construction.
University rankings were originally a business in the West, but in China they have become the baton for many "double-first-class" university construction. Some "double-first-class" universities do not run schools in accordance with the laws of education, do not run schools in accordance with the development strategies formulated by the schools, but run schools according to various overseas university rankings, which completely deviates from the mission and original intention of the university and deviates from the normal road of running schools.
Zhou Guangli and others also proposed in the paper that in the past 40 years of reform and opening up, China's higher education supervision has achieved a transformation from supervision and supervision to evaluation and monitoring. In this process, a set of higher education evaluation systems with Chinese characteristics has gradually been established. However, with the popularity of "foreign indicators", the narrow understanding of "management and office scoring" as "government-managed education, university-run education, and social evaluation education" holds that the government has no right to evaluate education, and can only let "third-party institutions" engage in university evaluation, which seriously interferes with the government's accountability assessment.
At the same time, Zhou Guangli's paper also mentioned that the discipline classification system is also regional and country-specific. The classification logic of disciplines in China is different from that of the United States. The U.S. ESI discipline system divides disciplines into 22 disciplines, and the U.S. Web of Science divides disciplines into 13 disciplines and 110 first-level disciplines. As a national standard in the field of higher education, the discipline classification system belongs to the category of national policies and has a high degree of authority. At present, some "double-first-class" universities do not follow China's own subject classification system, but run schools according to the discipline classification standards established by international rankings, which shakes the national standards for China's subject classification.
Chu Zhaohui told Red Star News that these world university rankings are based on how many inventions, how many creations and how many Nobel Prizes there are in the discipline. The world's truly first-class universities do not value these, but many universities in China are very concerned. Some universities have transferred benefits by colluding with ranking institutions, and even some universities have arranged special funds. There are also research teams at universities that pursue citation data in every possible way and use a lot of inappropriate means. This has also led to many rankings being even less credible.
Cheng Fangping believes that in the past, there was an evaluation of colleges and universities, and evaluation was an administrative act, while evaluation was an academic act. In the 1990s, higher education researchers thought that some detailed indicators in the West were worth learning from, but the rankings were interfered with by commercialization, and there were fee rankings, which was absurd, not a purely objective evaluation.
Cheng Fangping said that the evaluation and evaluation of colleges and universities has changed from a single administrative evaluation at the beginning to the participation of the academic and business communities, which is actually a kind of progress. However, higher requirements should be placed on the methodology and sources of information for evaluation. If the evaluation body itself is not professional, coupled with problematic sources of information, the evaluation needs to be marked with a question mark.
"It is beneficial for universities with autonomy to use Western rankings as a reference, and universities without autonomy will use ranking references to mess around." Cheng Fangping said that China's colleges and universities should refer to foreign experience in the process of development, but they should also understand its limitations and not lose themselves due to superstition. To build first-class universities, it is necessary to determine the development indicators of different types of colleges and universities and seek reference in the same field. The world's top university is not only the Harvard model, the world's top university may also be a humble industrial school.
How to get it right?
Rankings can be rejected but evaluations cannot be rejected, and standardized third-party evaluations need to be formed
Cheng Fangping said that according to the available information, it cannot be said that these schools have completely withdrawn from the World University Rankings, but can only say that they do not attach much importance to these evaluations. It's an improvement. Because everyone sees the limitations of ranking evaluation, they pay more attention to the school conditions. As far as the "double first-class" construction implemented by the mainland is concerned, one change is that it no longer pays attention to the comprehensive and first-level rankings of colleges and universities, and many universities with poor rankings also have relatively good majors.
Chu Zhaohui said that domestic colleges and universities should dilute the ranking. If domestic universities have said that they do not look at the rankings of foreign institutions at all, there are also irrational factors. University evaluation is a complete system, each country will do the evaluation, there will be self-evaluation within the university. Internal evaluation must refer to external evaluation, otherwise it is impossible to judge the quality of the university. The right thing to do should be to downplay the rankings. Not only should the international rankings be diluted, but also the domestic rankings. Let the university evaluation return to the professional and rational evaluation.
Chu Zhaohui believes that universities can reject the ranking, but they cannot refuse evaluation. For the evaluation of domestic universities, the first point is to make the data true. In the past, the Ministry of Education had required universities to publish annual reports, but some universities published data that did not stand up to scrutiny. At the same time, evaluation can not be done behind closed doors, or need to refer to foreign education evaluation. Evaluation is a system, and rankings are only a small part of evaluation. University evaluation and ranking are a relationship of inclusion, not precedence. The problem now is that many rankings do not do a standardized evaluation, but only extract some data to rank.
Chu Zhaohui said that for colleges and universities, China currently needs to form a standardized third-party evaluation system. This is not a ready-made standard answer, but a system that is gradually generated. The premise of the evaluation is that the university consciously publishes the annual report, and the evaluation agency can evaluate based on the real data.
The paper by Zhou Guangli and others also mentions that a country's higher education is compatible with a country's cultural model. Under the guidance of "foreign indicators", the traditional Chinese concept of university may be devalued to nothing, and Chinese universities will lose their "cultural self-confidence" and educational self-confidence.
The research of Zhou Guangli and others also proposes that the four world university rankings have shortcomings in technical standards and serious deficiencies in legality standards, although they cannot be directly used as the basis for dynamic monitoring and effectiveness evaluation of "double first-class" construction, but some useful secondary indicators can be analyzed from them. Through the meta-evaluation of the World University Rankings, I can find that there are at least two aspects of secondary indicators that can be used by me.
The first is the indicators of students and learning, mainly including the teacher-student ratio, the doctoral student ratio, the proportion of international students, and the reputation of employers. The second is the indicators of teachers and scientific research, mainly including the number of articles issued (total publications, average division publications, top journal publications), frequency of citations (total citations, divisions are cited), top 1% and top 10% of highly cited literature (number, proportion), normalization impact factor (normalization citation influence), the proportion of papers with collaborators as foreigners, the proportion of international teachers, the average scientific research income of teachers, the scientific research income of teachers from industry, and academic reputation.
Red Star News reporter Wu Yang intern Wang Chenyuan reported from Beijing
Edited by Xiang Caixia
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