Dear Editor, I was fascinated to read Janna Degener’s interesting piece on university rankings. Rankings are an endlessly interesting subject. It is important to understand why they exist. At a superficial level, they are designed to sell copies of magazines that publish them, or advertising in these publications, or are a commercial undertaking in some other way. More fundamentally, they owe their existence to competition and market forces. World rankings illustrate this point. Read more [...]
Academics love to measure things. But how well do they react to being measured? In the UK, that question has been thrown into sharp focus by the Research Excellence Framework, dubbed REF. It is a massive exercise, in which every university in the land has been invited, to prove the quality of the research it undertakes. Read more [...]
“Going to university” has long been a rite of passage for young adults in the developed world. But is it possible that a future generation, particularly in developing countries, will have the college experience virtually? The growth of information technology means that it is now possible, in principle, to get high-quality lectures and discussions at a computer screen. At the same time, the massive cost of university attendance is raising questions about its value. Read more [...]
European science conversations by the community, for the community
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