The NUS Asian University ranking.

NUS has placed 10th among Asian universities in the latest ranking survey by QS (Quacquarelli Symonds), the company which provides the annual Times Higher Education - QS World University Rankings.

Local academics are unhappy about this, especially considering that the same company gave NUS a 4th place ranking in Asia, last year. NUS President Tan Chorh Chuan even said that the University was still trying to understand how their placement had come about.

For my part, there is no mystery to this at all. The answer lies in the change that has been made in the way the rankings are done. Up until last year, there was a "citations per faculty" category, in which NUS did well. A citation is when an academic makes an official reference to a paper written by another, in writing his/her own paper. It is a means of giving credit for work used or commented on. This year, however, this "citations per faculty" category has been broken down into two separate categories: "papers per faculty" and "citations per paper". Under this new schema, NUS received a perfect score for "papers per faculty"...however, and this is critical, it did NOT receive a good score for "citations per paper".

Now this is a very telling and quite damaging observation being made by QS. "Citations per paper" is a direct measurement of the quality and significance of a paper. If a paper makes a significant contribution or has a useful or interesting idea in it, it will be cited often. If, however, a paper is a largely a waste of, well, paper, it will either not be cited at all, or be cited rarely. That NUS fell down on "citations per paper" tells us one awkward fact about NUS - they may be producing a lot of papers, but the quality is just not there: many of their papers are of indifferent quality compared to that produced in the rest of Asia. Were that not so, they would not have secured a poor ranking in this intra-Asian comparison, in the area of "citations per paper".

It seems that NUS have not understood the idea of "quality over quantity". It is all very well flooding the world with large numbers of papers, but if those papers are not actually very good, there isn't much point to it.

NUS has fallen in the Asian rankings for a very clear reason: a measure of the quality of papers written has been introduced and, in this respect, NUS is not strong.

Rather than pretending to be amazed or puzzled by this assessment by QS, NUS should learn from what they are being told. They really need to work not on the quantity of research output but on making sure that the research was worth doing in the first place, and was well done, when done. Quality papers are what make the academic world sit up and take notice: not a deluge of mediocre ones.

There is no mileage in casting doubt on QS' methods or intentions - for they have previously ranked NUS highly. What has happened this time, is that QS have REFINED their measurements. This new survey, far from being, as local academics portray it, misleading or misconceived, is, in fact, likely to be a much more accurate picture of the true standing of NUS in the academic world. This is clear because the only substantial change in the way of measuring, is to introduce research quality into the picture. Previously, NUS had been rewarded for sheer quantity.

If NUS wants to be a truly world-beating University, it needs to start producing seminal work - work that changes the world. QS' ranking states quite clearly that that is not what NUS is presently doing - were it so, NUS would have shone not in the number of papers, but in their citations.

The funny thing is, I know how much Singaporeans love competitions and ranking tables. Now, that the means of ranking has changed, perhaps Singapore's Universities will change the way they go about their work, purely to get a better ranking. I wouldn't be surprised to see a creeping up of quality, simply out of sheer competitiveness.

We shall see.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged eight years and seven months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, five years exactly, and Tiarnan, twenty-eight months, please go to:http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, College, University, Chemistry, Science, genetics, left-handedness, precocity, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, wunderkind, wonderkind, genio, гений ребенок prodigy, genie, μεγαλοφυία θαύμα παιδιών, bambino, kind.

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