Under-achievers

Although rankings are always a controversial subject among academics and educational experts, they do provide at least a vague idea of how various institutions are faring. Of course, most rankings have internal biases towards larger, older, English- language institutions. Unfortunately, even when these factors are taken into account, Ukrainian HEIs continue to rank very low.

A factor even more evocative than the specific rankings obtained by Ukrainian HEIs is their absence from most rankings, such as the THE-QS, a heavily peer-review-based ranking indicative of an institution's prestige; the Shanghai ranking, a natural science-oriented academic measure; or the HEEACT, which assesses contributions to international research. The rankings in which Ukrainian HEIs do make a place are either of poor quality or include a very large number of institutions. The first category includes the Global University Ranking, which is strongly biased towards former soviet countries, especially Russia, with 3 institutions in the top 100 and an astonishing 5th place for Lomonosov University. It ranks as the top Ukrainian HEIs: Kharkiv Polytechnic (356), Donetsk National Technical University (409), and Donetsk National University (421).

A more reliable ranking is Webometrics, developed by the cybermetrics lab of the Spanish National Research Council. The ranking measures how connected a given HEI website is, based on the assumption that "You are your website." It has the advantage of ranking over 8,000 institutions and rates Ukraine's podium thus: Taras Shevchenko University in Kyiv (1,346), Kyiv-Mohyla Academy (2,055), and Ivan Franko University in L'viv (2,099).

Another commonly-used way of assessing HEI effectiveness, although it is limited to technical and engineering institutions, is to observe activity around patent registration in a given country. On this account, Ukraine fairs better, with a total of 3,909 patents filed and 2,889 patent grants registered in 2008. While this is far from insignificant, it is below the number of patents filed by Belgium, Thailand or Denmark.

Nevertheless, it would be highly advisable to replace the necessity of relying on international rankings by creating rigorous home-grown ones. However, such rankings would have to be based on a transparent and academic methodology, unlike the Top 200 project which is a closed-door business, largely based on the size of an institution (leading Ostroh and Kyiv-Mohyla academies to pull out of it, despite habitually being placed at the top of the list). Proper rankings would provide all the parties involved with reliable feedback about the effectiveness of their endeavors.

Не знайшли потрібну інформацію? Скористайтесь пошуком google:

Генерація сторінки за: 0.004 сек.