| 10% |
In our survey conducted earlier this year, Staff with PhD came out as the most important factor not already considered as part of the global methodology. First introduced for the QS University Rankings – Latin America in 2011, the inaugural data collection process has run a lot more smoothly than anticipated for a new indicator.
The indicator is based on a simple proportion of each institution that hold a PhD or equivalent terminal degree.
1. How do you calculate the proportion of faculty staff with PhD?, over the full time professors or over the total of faculty members?
2. Does a 100 score means that 100% of the faculty members have a PhD?
Again this is done on an FTE basis. Scores are normalized relative to the universities in the study. A score of 100 indicates that the institution is amongst the leaders in the region for the given indicator.
The answer given by Mr Sowter as to how is the 100 points rank obtained seems to me to be totally unsatisfactory!It is as simple as this: If all latin american Universities have only 5 or 10 % of their faculty with a top academic degree, so everyone gets a 100 points ranking!!
That is equivalent to saying that if in a class all students fail, everybody gets an “A” grade??
That does not seem very logical .
We have a case in point in our country.The Government made a survey among the population and a vast majority said they are happy with the education their children are receiving.If the level of education of the population at large is fairly low, to them it will seem that the education their children receive is good!!Which by no means is an indication of the real quality of education in the country!!Cordially, Vladimir Yackovlev
Rankings such as these are context relevant, not absolute. I like your analogy in fact, but this is not equivalent to giving every student in the class an A grade though, it is like giving the best students an A grade and grading the rest of the kids relative to that – even if there are better students in another class. The performance of Latin American universities in our world rankings should be evidence enough of their level of competitiveness globally, but this exercise is designed to highlight relative strengths within the region.