Turquoise wrote:
FEOS wrote:
If any of those factors had been what you had looked at, I would agree with your weighting system. However, it didn't.
The only real metric with any objectivity is raw numbers enrolled. It is also the only one that reflects any kind of quality from year to year, based on continued enrollment rates.
And I would argue that your assumption that weighting is important is myopic, as well. You are too focused on a single issue and are ignoring the larger context. Raw numbers of international students are a far greater metric that weighting. For example, how many four-year university students do you think there are in the PRC? Probably far more than in the US. How about India. Likely the same. Yet the US has far more international students than either of those countries...as do several other countries with far smaller populations (and thus university populations). Those two examples alone disprove the adequacy of your weighting schema.
Well, I figured that the education system of a First World country being better than that of Third World countries would go without saying, but yes, you are correct that raw numbers matter in that comparison.
However, they don't when comparing First World systems.
Finland could have the best education system in the world, and even if 100% of their students somehow were international, they'd still have fewer international students than America has. Why? Because their system is much smaller.
Because America is so much larger than any other First World country, we have a size advantage when looking at raw numbers. To neglect that fact is just idiotic.
Why are you still stuck on archaic terminology like First and Third World? The Cold War is over. India and China have some of the top universities in science and technology, particularly if you include Singapore and Hong Kong.
http://www.universityportal.net/2007/09 … ering.html#12 in the world? From a "third world" country (by your definition)--Tsinghua University in China. Ahead of any university listed from mainland Europe. They're "first world"...right?
#36 in the world? From a "third world" country as well--Indian Institute of Technology. Guess which "first world" institution it beats out? University of Michigan. That's right. Big Blue. But that's OK, because the Blue and Maize tied with University of Peking--another "third world" university at #38...ahead of the "first world" Technical University of Munich.
Doesn't wash, Turq.
As far as your argument about quality not following quantity? Check
this out:
The world's top 10 universities
Rank Name Country Score
1 Harvard University US 100
2 Yale University US 99,8
3 University of Cambridge UK 99,5
4 University of Oxford UK 98,9
5 California Institute of Technology (Caltech) US 98,6
6 Imperial College London UK 98,4
7 University College London (UCL) UK 98,1
8 University of Chicago US 98,9
9 Massachussets Institute of Technology (MIT) US 96,7
10 Columbia University US 96,3
The world's top 10 natural science universities
Rank Name Country Score
1 Massachussets Institute of Technology (MIT) US 100
2 University of California, Berkeley US 99,5
3 University of Cambridge UK 98,3
4 Harvard University US 96,1
5 University of Oxford UK 92,3
6 Princeton University US 91,1
7 California Institute of Technology (Caltech) US 90,7
8 Stanford University US 88,0
9 University of Toronto Canada 79,2
10 University of Tokyo Japan 77,2
So...it would appear that quantity of international students
would reflect a quality of universities here, as well...from multiples sources.