Universidades europeias desgostosas com o seu ranking

De fato, existem muitos critérios pelos quais podem ser avaliadas as universidades, alguns sendo muito subjetivos, como por exemplo, saber que tipo de grande contribuição à elevação cultural ou "espiritual" da humanidade são dados por cursos de letras, de filosofia ou de artes (música, artes plásticas, etc).
A maior parte dos rankings universitários se baseia em critérios objetivos -- artigos publicados e citados, patentes extraídas, prêmios Nobel ou outras atribuições, etc. -- pois os critérios subjetivos, ou qualitativos, não encontrariam consenso entre todos os aferidores.
Como o "produtivismo" das universidades americanas as coloca nos primeiros lugar, as universidades européias reclamam do viés, mas em lugar de reclamar, elas deveriam estabelecer seus, ou outros, critérios, e discutir os indicadores com os especialistas da área.
Elas podem tentar propor um critério que valorize, por exemplo, quão mais agradável é comer camembert na mensa universitária, em lugar de hamburguer e batata frita (que eles também tem), ou tomar vinho, em lugar de refrigerante. Em todo caso, critérios são critérios, e os chineses estão jogando o jogo ao estilo americano. Pode não ser o melhor, mas parece que é o único, até agora, que deu resultados tangíveis em favor da humanidade (nas ciências médicas e biológicas, por exemplo, ou na física e na química).
Os europeus também contribuem, mas seu ritmo é mais lento e irregular. E existem muitos prêmios Nobel dados a europeus que trabalham nas universidades e laboratórios americanos. Em lugar de reclamar, os europeus deveriam se interrogar por que.
Paulo Roberto de Almeida

Europeans claim bias in college rankings
Qian Yanfeng and Wu Yiyao
China Daily, 17/08/2010

SHANGHAI - An annual Chinese ranking of the world's top 500 universities, which was dominated by educational institutions from the United States, has stoked criticism from Europe for using criteria "biased" against European schools.

European institutions were outnumbered by their US counterparts in the annual ranking compiled by Shanghai Jiaotong University's Center for World-Class Universities (CWCU).

The US retained its commanding position on the list, with eight schools in the top 10 and 54 in the top 100, while only two European schools made the top 10 and 33 were in the top 100.

Harvard University continued to top the ranking for the eighth successive year, followed by Berkeley, Stanford and MIT.

The highest-ranking institution in the UK was the University of Cambridge in fifth place, followed by the University of Oxford at number 10 on the list.

European media reacted strongly to the ranking, saying it had failed to accurately reflect an institution's overall performance by "focusing almost entirely on a university's achievements in scientific research", AFP reported.

First released in 2003, the Shanghai list uses criteria such as the number of staff and alumni who have won Nobel prizes and Fields medals, the number of researchers who are highly cited and the number of articles published in nature and science magazines.

Times Higher Education, a London-based magazine that publishes an annual supplement ranking the top 200 world universities, said on its website that the Shanghai list is based "almost entirely on scientific research", whereas it uses a sophisticated and transparent method to compile its own annual list.

Cheng Ying, executive director of CWCU, conceded there are "shortcomings" in the ranking's methodology, which does not lend sufficient weight to an institution's performance in the humanities.

But he said it is a technical problem, since it is much more difficult to assess an institutions' performance in the humanities than in scientific research.

Cheng also said the list is designed to compare the performance of Chinese universities and their overseas counterparts, in order to help the country create more world-class universities.

In that sense, he added, it was never intended to be used as an index for Chinese students who want to compare different institutions before they go abroad to study.