Alvy Singer: What’s with all these awards? They’re always giving out awards. Best Fascist Dictator: Adolf Hitler.
Annie Hall
It was with great excitement that I read my alumni news for ANU this month. Extraordinary things are happening. KPIs are being broken through all over.
ANU has excelled in the highly influential Philosophical Gourmet Report.
Announced last week, the Report ranks the top universities around the globe based on reputational surveys completed by over 250 philosophers.
ANU took out the top ranking in Australia, ahead of the University of Sydney’s philosophy department, the only other Australian institution in the top 50, which ranked at 45.
Internationally, ANU ranked 15 in the world, equal with Cornell University and The University of California, Berkeley, and ahead of every department in the United Kingdom except that of Oxford University.
ANU also excelled in the speciality ranking, coming out equal first in the current hot topics of Philosophy of Mind and Philosophy of Biology.
More information on the Report rankings is available at http://www.philosophicalgourmet.com/overall.asp
Not only that but Gareth Evans the New(ish) Chancellor of the ANU has exceeded his KPIs too:
ANU Chancellor Professor the Hon Gareth Evans AO QC has been named one of Foreign Policy magazine’s Top Global Thinkers of 2011.
The annual list, which is judged by a group of prominent international peers, recognises the 100 individuals who have shaped the global conversation and world’s best ideas over the last 12 months.
Professor Evans has been named on the 2011 list with Special Adviser to the U.N. Secretary General, Frances Deng, for making the idea of a ‘responsibility to protect’ more than an academic concept. According to Foreign Policy, the pair took the concept from “airy theory held by a small cadre of human rights advocates to a guiding principle of the world’s strongest military alliance”.
Gareth came in at 52/100 just behind John McCain who, on account of past thinking efforts, has always enjoyed an open invitation to blog here at Troppo.
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.
Philosophers ranking universities??
.
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.
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 . . . .