[ajeet_dhaliwal]

Why would the Japanese look to a London based publication for validation of their rankings among Asian universities? This sort of thing is not an exact science and it's a shame Asia (I know India does this a lot) continues to hold the West (UK/USA specifically) as some great arbitrator and moderator of the world when they may have their own vested interests about things - and of course vice versa.

[azinman2]

The question should be does that report have merit, not which nationality produced it.

[ajeet_dhaliwal]

How would you measure if it has merit? No one can know for sure if the report has merit, it's their opinion based on their metrics and what they consider to be important properties to measure, like I said it's not an exact science.

[azinman2]

I don't know anything about the report, but one would hope that these metrics are published and have some verifiability. One could create empirical metrics based on research output, monetization, patents, keynote speeches, citation counts, etc. It doesn't have to be so fuzzy.

My point is not to be knee-jerk about the nationality source, but rather look at the claims and evaluate them. If they previously ranked Tokyo University so highly -- should we throw that out too?

[icantdrive55]

"One could create empirical metrics based on research output, monetization, patents, keynote speeches, citation counts, etc. It doesn't have to be so fuzzy."

Would it really help the average student? I went to Berkley for a semester, and in some courses we watched the professor on video. He literally phoned it in.

I actually had a better learning experience at my local community college.

This is just my subjective experience.

I have known too many people who literally drank/hallucinated their way through an Ivy League school. They graduate, and don't tell anyone the truth about their fancy college learning experience. There's no test at the end to correlate into an empirical metric. It's just, "I graduated from this UC, or Whatever!".

I would like to see every school that accepts federal/state tax money give their students a standardized test, and future funding would be based on the collective students score. It would have to be a fair balanced test. Instead of I graduated from MIT; it would be I graduated with a 95%.

It might level out the playing field? It would prevent networking--maybe? It would prevent having to "kiss ass"? It would prevent me from throwing up in my mouth when a new Princeton graduate puts on the horned rimmed glasses shortly after graduation, and just expects respect.

[omginternets]

Indeed, postmodernism is not a science at all.

Test of us non-postmodernists value an education system capable of producing competent elites, who in turn produce value for society (measure that how you like). By that measure, it's pretty apparent that Japan's universities are doing poorly.

And the Japanese agree with this, in case you missed it. Please stop with this nauseating pedantry.

[gydfi]

Japan is going pretty well last I checked. It's one of the few places that is successfully transitioning to a lower birth rate via population shrinkage rather than mass immigration, enabling them to maintain their own culture and people.

[csa]

Serious question... do you or have you recently lived in Japan?

Japanese people don't think things are going so well.

Many knowledgeable non-Japanese don't think that things are going so well.

My personal take is that Japan is taking a huge gamble by taking on a massive amount of debt relative to their GDP. The piper will need to be paid at some point.

John Mauldin had described the Japanese economy as a bug in search of a windshield. Based on what my Japanese friends in the financial sector say, they agree. Everyone is just crossing their fingers now and hoping that something... anything... happens to force a redirect. No one is quite sure what this will look like (I personally think yen will take a big hit, but that's just a guess).

[rangibaby]

I have lived in Japan since I was a teenager and people have been predicting an economic collapse leading to the end of Japan since before then.

Not saying that you're wrong but it's not the first time I have read that comment.

[konceptz]

I've been told that the olympics in 2020 is one such possible happening.

[thaumasiotes]

Well, for a very unintuitive value of "maintain their own people". A low birth rate has pretty direct effects on that.

[hx87]

And why should we discount an opinion just because the source is from outside the country? Internal biases are every bit as severe as outside biases.

[jimmywanger]

> Why would the Japanese look to a London based publicatio

This is playing identity politics at its worst. You're saying that a London based publication might have vested interest about things, and therefore somebody from a foreign country shouldn't care about their rankings at all.

You don't address how the rankings are formed, if they're accurate or not, or if they're useful in measuring the economic value of the graduates.

You also don't propose another ranking system/methodology/evaluation system. You're basically bringing nothing to the table except "Asia has an inferiority complex" which is a statement you don't back up with facts.

[anonymousDan]

Yup, those rankings are completely subjective bullshit. Something like 50% of the score is based on asking a selection of academics what their opinion of a university is.

[natoliniak]

I agree, although reputation is closer to 25% of the score. The rest is based on factors like number of citations, impact, which in my opinion benefits institutions from English speaking countries.

[dwg]

Are you suggesting they should ignore perspectives outside of "Asia"?

[coolandsmartrr]

  > London based

It's US based. Perhaps you're thinking of The Economist?

[foota]

"Uiversity of Tokyo lost its number one ranking, falling to number seven, in the Asia university rankings published by the Times Higher Education of London"

[ajeet_dhaliwal]

See the first paragraph of the article, the rankings are by Times Higher Education.

[Naritai]

The article says the rankings were published by Times Higher Education of London.