Editorial
ONCE again, the United Kingdom’s Times Higher Education (THE) World University Rankings (WUR) report, this time for 2011-2012, does not have a single Philippine university in it. Last year, on the 2010-2011 THEWUR list, there was also no Philippine university among the world’s top 400.
Understandably, some university authorities have pooh-poohed the THEWUR and other ratings reports. Some say they could not have been included because they did not participate. Well, if a university does not participate in these surveys by submitting data the rating institutions ask for, then of course that university could not possibly be rated. How can THEWUR, the Shanghai Jioatong University, High Impact Universities Research Performance Index and the Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) survey rate a university if they are not told how many research projects the university did, how many PhDs it graduated in the different disciplines, how many of its faculty received Nobel Prizes and other awards, etc.?
The rank-giving agencies
The most exacting ratings are those of the Shanghai Jiaotong University. It compiles records of only 1,200 universities. It considers the Nobel Prizes won by faculty members, articles published in Nature and Science, and entries in the Science Citation Index and Social Sciences Citation Index.
International educators consider the THEWUR the next most prestigious ratings after Shanghai. THEWUR zeroes in on the universities’ teaching and research accomplishments. The Times, which cooperates with Reuters in compiling the World University Rankings, does a poll among 13,000 selected academics from all over the world.
The High Impact Universities Research Performance Index is the third most prestigious rating agency. None of our universities rank in High Impact because they are weak in research.
Some of the rank-giving firms are doing it to help universities connect with fund sources and help students choose which foreign university to go to.
Such a rating agency is the Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) World University Rankings. In QS’s survery last year, the University of the Philippines (UP) and other leading Philippine universities such as the Ateneo de Manila University (AdMU), De La Salle University (DLSU) and the University of Sto. Tomas (UST), fell from their previous rankings among the best schools worldwide.
In that survey, UP, seen as the country’s leading university, dropped to 332nd place from its 2010 ranking of 314th, while AdMU fell to 360 from 307 and DLSU went down from the 451-500 bracket to the 551-600 bracket.
UST fell out of the Top 600 universities from the 551-600 bracket in 2010.
There are other agencies like Webometrics Ranking of World Universities. It rates more than 19,000 colleges.
Webometrics’ list of the top 10 Philippine universities has UP Diliman, DLSU, Ateneo, UPLB, UP System, UST, Xavier, UP Mindanao, UP Manila, and MSU-IIT.
Another rating group that bases its ranking only on Internet statistics is 4International Colleges & Universities. It lists as the Philippine top 10 all the UP universities, Ateneo, Aquinas, DLSU, MSU-IIT, UST, UE, and San Carlos.
Another agency geared more to help students find universities abroad is Top Study Links. It has on its 10 top Philippine universities UP Diliman, DLSU, UPLB, ADMU, Xavier, UST, UP System, UP Manila, UP Mindanao, and MSU-IIT.
Don’t pooh-pooh the ratings agencies
Pooh-poohing these international agencies that survey the state and quality of our educational institutions is like giving the finger to the institutions rating our country’s competitiveness, our business-friendliness, and our attractiveness as an investment destination.
Our lack of money, the incompetence and laid-back ways of our leaders and policy-makers, their unwillingness to act for the common good and against their dysnaties’ self interest, should not make us behave like some children of bad parents. We should not throw tantrums against the world, curse the light that ratings and rankings give instead of making these inspire us to greater innovation, zeal for fund-raising and eagerness for international connections.
Global university rankings are important. More than just school pride and helping our universities’ scholars go to the great graduate schools abroad or get higher-paying jobs as OFW professionals, being on the list of the world’s top universities make them attractive to fund donors. Being on the quality lists also make foreign scholars, professors and research-project leaders want to do stints in our Philippine universities.
So how do our universities get into these lists? Pour more investments in them.
But this is precisely the opposite of what the Aquino administration has willed to do for the UP and other state universities and colleges. The Commission on Higher Education (CHED) admits that budget cuts contributed to Philippine universities’ decline in world rankings.
Of the P1.816 trillion budgeted for the 2011 National Expenditure Program, only P21.8 billion was allocated to the 110 SUCs nationwide, down from the P22.03 billion allocated in 2010.
Less PhDs per capita in the Philippines
More concretely definitive of the Philippine inferiority to the best Asian countries in terms of academe is that we have less Ph. D’s working in our country per capita than Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan, China, etc.
There is no question about the intellectual quality of the Filipino Ph. Ds and how they compete magnificently well against their peers abroad. But they get hired away from the Philippines as soon as they graduate.
A respected UP academic, Dr. Caesar Saloma, pointed out years ago in a story that appeared in the Philippine Star that Filipino PhDs in the natural sciences, mathematics, and engineering, make up a very small number. He said that in a 2004 article in the journal Nature, the number of PhDs per one hundred of the population is 8, 17, and 18 in Japan, the US, and the European Union, respectively. The Philippines, with its population of about 85.5 million [in 2004], would need to have 6.8 million PhDs if it were to aspire to the scientific muscle of Japan.
Dr. Saloma said that the total number of PhDs in the Philippines is not likely to exceed even 10,000.
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