Comments on: ANU’s Philosophy Department and Chancellor exceed their KPIs Shock!

By: Nicholas Gruen

Nicholas Gruen — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 07:15:09 +0000

Yep, but getting a ranking is all that matters.

I’ve been involved with international bodies advising national governments and, when they want to point to some ranking, I have pointed out that the rankings that are available are incoherent from start to finish. The basic response. “We know that but all governments want to go up the rankings – this is an important motivator”.

So there you go . . . .

By: fxh

fxh — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 06:24:14 +0000

Philosophers ranking universities??

Please give your opinion of the attractiveness of the faculty for a prospective student, taking in to account (and weighted as you deem appropriate) the quality of philosophical work and talent on the faculty, the range of areas the faculty covers, and the availability of the faculty over the next few years.

I’d be surprised if most of them knew who was in their own corridor let alone anything about a couple of hundred universities in other countries.

I’d assume its like the Eurovision Song Contest judging where you downgrade your enemies and competition.

By: conrad

conrad — Sun, 26 Feb 2012 20:32:39 +0000

One of the really weird things about all of these scales where people get to rate how good other universities are is actually how little information almost everyone would have. For example, without looking it up, I doubt I could rank the people in my own department accurately (and some things you can’t look up since they arn’t measured appart from happiness scales, like how good a teacher someone is), and nor could I rate other departments (how am I supposed to know who is coming and going across the years?), let alone universities. Yet we get more and more of these scales.