文/肖恩·科赫兰 译/周忠花

世界前十大学如何炼成？

文/肖恩·科赫兰 译/周忠花

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is in fi rst place in the latest league table1league table 名次表，排名表。of the world’s best universities.

[2] It’s the fi fth year in a row that the US university, famous for its science and technology research, has been top of the QS World University Rankings2由英国教育组织Quacquarelli Symonds所发表的年度世界大学排名。.

[3] Stanford University is in second place, followed by Harvard University,the world’s wealthiest university.

[4] Behind these in fourth place is University of Cambridge, followed by California Institute of Technology(Caltech), another science-based university.

[5] With King’s College London in 16th place, it means that Britain has five institutions in the top 20. Edinburgh University is 19th and there are two Swiss institutions, ETH Zurich and Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, in this top tier.

[6] But US universities are still in the majority, taking 11 of the places in the top 20.

[7] Even though some university leaders might be sceptical3sceptical怀疑的。about such rankings, they will all be sharply4sharply鲜明地；明显地。aware of their signi fi cance.

Mike Nicholson, Oxford University’s head of admissions, says: “It’s fair to say that it would be a foolish university that did not pay close attention to how league tables are constructed.”

[8] Rankings have become an inescapable5inescapable不可避免的，不能忽视的。part of the reputation and brand image of universities, helping them to attract students, staff and research investment.

No university website is complete without the claim to be in the top 100 for something or other.

How to be top

[9] But what is perhaps more surprising is that they are a relatively recent arrival on the higher education landscape.

[10] This is only the twelfth year of the QS rankings and the earliest global league table, the Academic Ranking of World Universities6世界大学学术排名为中国国家级研究项目，由中国政府授权上海交通大学世界一流大学研究中心根据研究结果每年发布一次。, produced by the Shanghai Jiao Tong University, was fi rst published in 2003.

[11] They have risen alongside the globalisation of higher education and the sharing of information online.

[12] But how does a university get to the top of the rankings? And why does such a small group of institutions seem to have an iron grip7iron grip牢牢控制。on the top places?

[13] The biggest single factor in the QS rankings is academic reputation.This is calculated by surveying more than 60,000 academics around the world about their opinion on the merits of institutions other than their own.

Ben Sowter, managing director of the QS, says this means that universities with an established name and a strong brand are likely to do better.

[14] The next biggest factor—“citations per faculty”—looks at the strength of research in universities, calculated in terms of the number of times research work is cited by other researchers.

[15] The ratio of academic staff to students represents another big chunk8chunk 〈非正式〉相当大的量。of how the rankings are decided.

Big brands

[16] These three elements, reputation, research citations and staff ratios,account for four-fifths of the rankings.And there are also marks for being more international, in terms of academic staff and students.

[17] As a template for success, it means that the winners are likely to be large, prestigious, research-intensive universities, with strong science departments and lots of international collaborations.

[18] Is that a fair way to rank universities? It makes no reference to the quality of teaching or the abilities of students?

“We don’t take an exhaustive9exhaustive详尽的；彻底的。view of what universities are doing,” says Mr Sowter. “It’s always going to be a blunt instrument,” which he says is both the strength and weakness of such lists.

Immigration points

[19] The overall effect of a decade of such league tables has been beneficial,Mr Sowter argues. It has made universities take a closer look at themselves to see how they compared with rivals.

[20] But the creation of such a ranking has a dynamic10dynamic推动变化的力量。of its own—and Mr Sowter says there have been unintended consequences.

“Some fixate on it too closely,” he says. Improving their ranking position has been written into the mission statements of some universities.

[21] It has also taken on a quasiofficial status. Denmark’s immigration system gives extra points to graduate applicants according to how high their university is ranked.

[22] The pressure to get up the ladder has also pushed some universities into trying to bend the rules, says Mr Sowter, with incorrect data being submitted.

Multi-ranking

[23] Philip Altbach, director of the Center for International Higher Education at Boston College, cautions on what is actually being measured. Should non-research universities be compared in rankings designed for research-intensive universities?

[24] An attempt to create a different type of university comparison was launched in 2014 by the European Union, with the U-Multirank project11多维度全球大学排名由欧盟发起，在五个维度——科研水平、教学质量、国际化程度、知识转化成果（与企业合作和创业）和地区建设参与度上对各机构进行比较，可提供其整体排名以及在某具体领域上的排名。.

[25] This puts less emphasis on reputation and allows students to select their own criteria to make comparisons.

[26] The idea is that a student wanting to fi nd an undergraduate arts course isn’t really going to learn much from rankings driven by international science research projects.

[27] There could be another entirely different way of comparing universities on the horizon.

[28] Andreas Schleicher, the OECD12=Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development经济合作与发展组织，简称经合组织。’s director of education, who has pioneered Pisa13=Program for International Student Assessment,一项由经合组织统筹的学生能力国际评估计划。主要对接近完成基础教育的15岁学生进行评估，测试学生们能否掌握参与社会所需要的知识与技能。tests at school level, wants to begin comparisons in higher education. He says there is a public demand for assessing the quality of universities.

But rather than looking at what goes into universities—such as money, staff and facilities—he wants to find out more about the output in the form of what students are learning.

[29] It’s not dif fi cult to see the limitations of university rankings. They measure the attributes14attribute属性，特性。of the university rather than its students. They produce a list dominated by a certain of type of institution. Small, specialist, arts-based colleges are going to suffer regardless of their quality.

[30] Those that focus on teaching rather than research will not be as recognised. The emphasis on reputation will reinforce the advantage of those that are already famous. And the top tier of these global rankings is exclusively filled with English-speaking universities.

[31] But such lists still exert155 exert施加；运用。an undeniable166 undeniable不可否认的；确凿的。, attention-grabbing appeal.

“The fact that people argue about league tables is a trigger17trigger（尤指引发不良反应或发展的）起因。for change,”says Mr Sowter. ■

英国教育机构QS最新发布的世界大学排名显示，麻省理工学院位列第一。

[2]这已经是这所素以科研见长的美国高校连续五年蝉联榜首了。

[3]斯坦福大学位列第二，世界上最富有的大学哈佛大学紧随其后。

[4]排名第四的是剑桥大学，而另一所以理科为主的大学加州理工学院则位居第五。

[5]英国在世界排名前20的大学中共占据5席，包括名列第16名的伦敦国王学院和第19名的爱丁堡大学。瑞士同样谋得两席，分别是苏黎世联邦理工学院和洛桑联邦理工学院。……