IDEAS/RePEc has (at last) released rankings of universities. Previous rankings spread economists over department, institutes and what not, so that the institutional ranking reflected fractionalisation as much as quality.
The new rankings are here: http://ideas.repec.org/top/top.toplevel.html
No big surprises. One non-US university (U London) in the top 10, two (Oxford U) in the top 20. Tilburg U (at 27) is top of the non-Anglon-Saxons, beating Toulouse (at 32).
UCD is top of the Irish at 98. TCD comes at 143. Ireland does better than Norway and New Zealand but worse than Denmark, countries with a comparable population.
Not bad. Could be better.
15 replies on “New rankings at IDEAS/RePEc”
Seems more like a race to get publications out and noticed more than a quality battle,
I think there is a view that the number of publications goes hand in hand with quality.
Although I think its a joke our best is 98, if even.
@Silver Fox
If you had taken a minute to study the ranking method, you would have noticed that the publication numbers are quality-corrected and that the number of citations receives a higher weight in the overall ranking than does the number of publications.
Is there any ranking system that does not touch on publications? Rather quality of output, ability to produce efficient human capital.
I could understand the ranking systems justification if publications were that of home grown academics.
I fail to see the full evaluation of a University on just publications.
If one had enough money to lure “top ranking” profs to a university I am sure you could increase its status, no?
Is there any ranking system that does not touch on publications? Rather quality of output, ability to produce efficient human capital.
“are you good at teaching?”
I could understand the ranking systems justification if publications were that of home grown academics.
I fail to see the full evaluation of a University on just publications even if the publications are quality corrected.
If one had enough money to lure “top ranking” profs to a university I am sure you could increase its status, no?
@Silver Fox
The ranking is based on research quality only. No apologies. Assessment of teaching quality is something else entirely, and not attempted here.
Money can buy quality, sure, but building a good department requires more than a bag of money.
No entries from China, Brazil, India, Mexico, Nigeria….
Do those countries really not have any of the Universities in the top 200 or that could at least challenge UCD or TCD??? Or is it the fact that they do not publish papaers and disseminate ideas in the same way?
@Zhou
China and India may be catching up in the natural sciences and engineering, but they are still far behind in the social sciences. There are plenty of good Chinese and particularly Indian economists, but they are almost without exception in Europe and North America.
It would be useful if there were a ‘teaching quality’, or should that be ‘learning quality’, category – with sufficient appropriate Performance Characteristics to capture the variety of situations encountered in third-level institutions.
Regrettably, third-level teaching is regarded as a third-rate activity, behind research and academic administration. Think of these ratings as if they had been made by S+P, Moody, or whomever!!! Veblen would have been charmed by such listings – his comments blistering.
Brian P
I think Ireland comes out of this survey very well. We shouldn’t only be compared with countries of similar population. The best measure is the number of universities in the top 200, adjusted per head of population.
Its clear that the English-speaking countries perform very well in this survey. The U.S. and U.K. are far ahead of the rest. But, after adjustment for population, Ireland is on a par with both these. We are pulling our weight fully in the English-speaking academic world. After the English-speaking world, the next best group are the Nordic countries and the Netherlands. Ireland seems to be marginally ahead of this group, again when adjusted for population. After these, France and Germany are performing very poorly indeed. Both these countries have about one-third the number in the top 200 that the U.K. has. This may help explain why both these countries have such a poor record for economic growth in recent decades. The other regions, mainly southern and eastern Europe come nowhere. Ireland has more universities in the top 200 than Italy (pop 60 million) or Spain (pop 40 million) or the whole of eastern Europe.
The figures highlight that the threat to Ireland from southern and eastern Europe is exaggerated. There is no need, as some want, for wages in Ireland to be reduced to levels there. Sure, some low-skill manufacturing is bound to migrate from Ireland to those cheaper regions. But, for high-skill work that requires highly-educated employees, Ireland is a much better place to invest than either of those regions. Which, indeed, is confirmed by all available statistics for FDI investment.
@John
I agree. Ireland does better than Germany, Italy, and Spain. France is a bit iffy, as it not just the number but also the rank that matters.
I disagree on the Netherlands. There are 8 economics departments in the Netherlands (with 16 mln people) , 6 of which are in the top 200. There are 7 economics departments in the Republic of Ireland (with 4 mln people), 2 of which are in the top 200.
The positive thing for Ireland is that many of the top universites are close by and/or English speaking.
It would be interesting to know how many people from Ireland who study at foreign universities (postgrad) return to Ireland. Most of the people I know who studied abroad ended up working abroad too. We need the universities and job opportunities to entice these people back. This is especially so as postgrad studies in a foreign country are regarded by some as being more challenging and developing for students.
@John
“for high-skill work that requires highly-educated employees, Ireland is a much better place to invest than either of those regions.”
Research quality does not equal educational quality, so this ranking can’t be used to infer the latter from the former.
@Jacco Thijssen
There is numerous other data that shows Ireland to have a highly-educated population. The PISA results from 2006 show reading literacy in Ireland to be the second highest in the EU after Finland, while science and maths literacy, although not as good as reading literacy, are both well above the EU average. The EU Labour Force Survey of 2007 showed Ireland had the highest proportion of its population aged 25 to 34 with 3rd level education of any EU country. Both these show a similar picture to the survey Richard Tol posted here. Namely, Ireland, the Netherlands and the Nordic countries are now the best educated in the EU. France and Germany are slipping badly from previously high positions. Souhern Europe (Spain, Portugal, Italy, Greece) lags miles behind. While eastern Europe is also far behind, but some of the smaller eastern European countries are showed marked improvement from previously low positions.
This really measures the size of the economics contingent, its fluency and peer recognition (citations). i.e. it identifies institutions where it might be useful and/or congenial to work as an English-speaking academic economist.
But: is the number of institutions which ranked a relevant measure of national performance? Are two institutions ranked in the forties better/worse than one in the twenties?
Would a virtual merger of Irish universities produce a much better score for the merged entity?
@Antoin
The indicator is a measure of “total quality”. That is, it is not normalised by the number of economists. This implies that a merger of departments would improve the ranking.
I would think that there are economies of scale in academic departments, both in management and cross-fertilization of ideas, so merging departments may be a good idea anyway.
In this paper
http://ideas.repec.org/a/eso/journl/v38y2007i3p289-322.html
we show that the number of economic departments per head of population in Ireland is very high when compared to other European countries.