◥ University. ☢️ Quality Uni. ⚫ UK. Times Higher Education. World University Rankings. THE (Times Higher Education) has been providing trusted performance data on universities for students and their families, academics, university leaders, governments and industry, since 2004. We create university rankings to assess university performance on the global stage and to provide a resource for readers to understand the different missions and successes of higher education institutions. Our rankings cover the three main areas of university activity: research, impact and teaching. Global rankings The THE World University Rankings provide the definitive list of the world’s best universities, with an emphasis on the research mission.
It is the only global university league table to judge research-intensive universities across all of their core missions: teaching (the learning environment); research (volume, income and reputation); citations (research influence); industry income (knowledge transfer) and international outlook (staff, students and research). Impact rankings. Hidden cost of open access. The Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences recently joined the "open-access" movement, urging its professors to post their research on a freely accessible website.
In so doing, it aligned itself with those critics of the traditional journal publishing system who assert that knowledge should be free to everyone and not the preserve of increasingly monopolistic and predatory multinational journal publishers. For Harvard University, the decision is relatively cost free. Its institutional prestige and the prominence of many of its faculty will ensure that scholars gravitate to its website. But in most cases, open access simply places material on the internet to join the exponentially expanding universe of information. The traditional scholarly journal provides a means of selection. Unfortunately, journals have come under increasing attack as they have become more commercial. Profit, competition and excess have spawned the open-access movement. Researchers' web use could make libraries redundant. Libraries could be "swept aside by history" if they continue to fall behind the internet in addressing the changing demands of researchers and students, a new report has cautioned.
In an age when the internet is king, say the study's authors, university libraries are not keeping pace with change. They recommend that libraries foster closer links with internet search engines. "Librarians need to make things simpler or consumers will simply vote with their feet. At worst ... findings suggest that massive failure is taking place at the library terminal and, despite the high investment, library systems are not delivering," they write. The report is based on a study by University College London's Centre for Information Behaviour and the Evaluation of Research.
It was commissioned by the British Library and Joint Information Systems Committee. "It almost seems that they go online to avoid reading in the traditional sense," the report says. john.gill@tsleducation.com. THE - Careers intelligence: will the virus crisis change academic careers? “Perhaps, just perhaps, some good things will come of this crisis,” reflected Robin Grimes, professor of material physics at Imperial College London, on how the coronavirus might reshape academic life. While it might be hard to look beyond the immediate problems afflicting higher education, there are some signs that academia could change for the better after the lockdown is lifted, said Professor Grimes.
“I spoke to 200 people at a virtual academic conference the other day, and taking these events online certainly makes them more inclusive, especially to those who lack the financial support to go to increasingly expensive meetings.” That switch to online symposia might even cause some universities to consider hiring individuals from countries whose talent they had not previously considered, said Professor Grimes, who is chief scientific adviser for the UK’s Ministry of Defence on nuclear science and technology matters. jack.grove@timeshighereducation.com. THE - Careers intelligence: how to deal with a new boss. Academic leadership roles are typically tied to a three- or five-year tenure, meaning that new bosses come around on a fairly regular basis.
Add the fact that individual academic staff are often accountable to different individuals for their teaching, their research and their administrative duties and it might feel that you’re under new management more frequently than a Premier League footballer. How should you handle a new boss? New boss, new rules Incumbent leaders are usually keen to make their mark. After all, few careers are enhanced by a CV narrative that reads “2017-present: minded the shop and kept things ticking along”.
Rather, your new boss is likely to want to demonstrate that they improved, streamlined or transformed the activities for which they are responsible. Such career narratives are the reason your new boss is unlikely to be the same as your old boss. Do your homework Academia is a relatively closed community. Control-Alt-Delete Actions speak louder than words Just ask. THE - Sam Gyimah replaces Jo Johnson as universities minister. Sam Gyimah has replaced Jo Johnson as universities minister in the UK’s Cabinet reshuffle.
Mr Gyimah, the former prisons minister, took on the role spanning the Department for Education and the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy after Mr Johnson was appointed transport minister and minister for London. On Twitter, Mr Johnson said that universities were “our greatest asset [and the] best thing about this country”. He said he was proud of his reforms – especially the teaching excellence framework and the Higher Education and Research Act – and that Mr Gyimah would be a “brilliant” successor. Mr Gyimah, the MP for East Surrey since 2010, is no stranger to the DfE, having served as a parliamentary under-secretary of state in the department between 2015 and 2016.
He supported Remain in the run-up to the referendum on the UK’s membership of the EU. Mr Gyimah’s selection follows the appointment of Damian Hinds, formerly a work and pensions minister, as education secretary. THE - Oxford academics launch world’s first ‘blockchain university’ A group of University of Oxford academics have launched the world’s first “blockchain university”, an Oxbridge-style institution that they describe as “Uber for students, Airbnb for academics”. Woolf University will not have a physical campus and will instead be based around an app that allows academics to advertise their expertise to prospective students, who can in turn select modules to suit their needs and interests. Blockchain, the increasingly popular digital ledger, will be used to regulate contracts and payments and also to record academic achievement.
In time, students would be able to acquire credits towards undergraduate degrees, which would be placed on the blockchain and which are likely to be accredited by traditional higher education institutions in the first instance. Joshua Broggi, Woolf’s director and a junior research fellow at Wolfson College, Oxford, said that the aim was to allow academics to take control of their employment and to lower tuition fees for students.
THE - Rethinking the undergraduate business model. Despite clear differences in research intensity, size and age, most of the 20,000 universities in the world share four common assumptions about how they deliver undergraduate education. Students generally attend campus; where fees are being paid, they are paid directly to the university; the default setting remains full-time study and all the credits for a qualification usually come from the same provider. Predicting the future of a sector isn’t easy. After all, most of us are struggling to create free time rather than worrying about how best to spend the time saved by flying cars and domestic robots. Nevertheless, higher education does feel as though it is poised on the edge of a revolutionary period.
Some institutions have tinkered with the four assumptions set out above, while others, such as Woolf University, are making more radical moves. It’s time to explore each of these assumptions in turn and see what lessons other industries might offer. THE - Teaching assistant robots will reinvent academia. Bank clerks, hotel receptionists and assembly line workers might eventually be replaced by technology because their roles are structured and repetitive in nature. For those in higher education, there is the reassurance that teaching students, grading assignments and undertaking research require the services of a living, breathing academic.
A permanent position is still exactly that, isn’t it? In 2016, Ashok Goel, from the Georgia Institute of Technology, introduced a new member of his teaching team, Jill Watson. Students loved Jill. She would answer questions quickly, politely and with the occasional jaunty “Yep!”. She would sometimes say something a little odd, but don’t we all? Because Goel didn’t initially tell his students that Jill was in fact an AI system, he was forced to add a short delay to her responses. Jill Watson’s status as a teaching assistant should sound a salutary note for those of us in higher education. THE - Career advice: how to handle ‘revise and resubmit’ requests. Publishing well is key to a successful research career yet, like many aspects of modern academic life, the practice has intensified and become industrialised over recent decades. The editors of top-ranked journals face a deluge of new submissions, and rejection rates have soared.
Surviving three or four rounds of the “revise and resubmit” (R&R) cycle is an exercise in creativity and persistence: here is some advice on how to survive and thrive in this environment. Have a tantrumIf you’ve received an R&R request, the world is telling you something. If it comes from a low-ranked or new journal, things are really bad. But, if it emanates from the editorial offices of a prestigious journal, an R&R carries confirmation of your talent, since the vast majority of poor-quality submissions will have been rejected instantly. Take time outOnce you’ve had your initial tantrum, take some time out.
Robert MacIntosh is head of the School of Social Sciences at Heriot-Watt University. THE - PhD diary: Where do I begin? | Student. “And where will you begin?” This question, which my two supervisors asked me at the beginning of the month, filled me with dread. It’s a good question, but I had no idea how to answer it. And instead of trying to decide for myself, I would rather they had told me where they thought I should begin. Where do you start a research project that will last three or four years and will culminate in a thesis of something like 90,000 words? Beginning, I must admit, is something I struggle with (as I sit down to write this post, I find myself doing just about anything to avoid typing). However, I am comforted by something Jacqueline Rose, a well-known literary scholar, once said: every time she begins to write, she feels as if this will be the time she cannot do it.
PhD diary: Preparing for a PhD In my experience as a student, this feeling of defeat from the outset is something I recognise. But there are things that I think I can do to try to minimise this difficulty. THE - Career advice: how to supervise a PhD student for the first time. Starting outSupervision will give you a chance to share the accumulated wisdom of your own PhD journey and anything else that has followed. However, you need to start at ground zero with each new student to help build a shared sense of what good practice looks like. A good first step is for both of you to take a small batch of seminal papers and agree to read them before swapping notes. This simple exercise will allow you the chance to demonstrate how to scrutinise the key ideas, assumptions, limitations and contributions that each author or authoring team makes in its paper. Doing so in the style of a collaborative, worked example will help to set a particular tone that will pay rich rewards in the months and years ahead.
Being clear about the level of depth and the practicalities of note taking is as important as showing how you approach the basic task of getting to grips with the literature. However, a PhD is more expedition than sprint.