Indeed Mouse, you are correct - ODTU (METU) is ranked 3rd behind China in the "BRICS & Emerging Economies 2015 Rankings". It's interesting that you bring this topic up, for the "rankings" are indicators of performance in higher education, that are key to sustainable economic growth.
Due to developments in Syria and Turkey's involvement, we're only seeing the geopolitical situation on the Global front and the internal growth of the populations involved, only secondary, next to humanitarian needs. The strength of any Nation or people interfaces with it's performance in higher education, research, and developing stronger economies to sustain itself.
Below, is this statement: "In countries like Russia and China, the governments are unsatisfied with the simple evolutionary development of their universities. They think the process is going too slowly, so they are picking out groups of universities where they will foster conditions for rapid development and invest heavily." "So what we are trying to say is that there are really dynamic and exciting universities in these regions that are crowded out from the ranking due to the dominance of the U.S. and Western Europe,” Baty explained. However, Baty stressed that the decision to separate BRICS out into a different list does not make it “second-class,” because the emerging economies ranking utilizes the same criteria as the World ranking." According to Director of the Institute of the Institute of Education at the Higher School of Economics Isak Frumin, there is another important reason experts should pay attention to the BRICS & Emerging Economies Rankings. He thinks emerging countries might form a unique system of higher education in the future that will differ from the prevailing American-British system of today."
So, getting back to your Post, Mouse - ODTU (METU) ranking third in the "BRICS & emerging economies rankings" would pose a problem for a "Dictator" like Erdogan. The "brawl between two groups of students" might be to promote "separation" so the groups can be divided and the University, as a whole, weakened?
ODTÜ is among the top 3 universities
http://ncc.metu.edu.tr/Announcements/2014/12/223/odtu_is_among_the_top_3_universities.html
ODTÜ has shown another strong performance in the world university rankings and ranked in the top five in the "BRICS & Emerging Economies Rankings 2015", released by the Times Higher Education (THE) on Wednesday, December 3, 2014.
ODTÜ had ranked in the "World Top 100 Universities" list in the "World Reputation Rankings", released by the Times Higher Education in 2012, 2013, and 2014, and also had ranked in the "World University Rankings 2014-2015", released in October, in the 85th , among the world's best 400 universities. ODTÜ, thus, had been accredited as the first and only university in Turkey to enter each of these lists.
The BRICS & Emerging Economies Rankings 2015 includes only institutions in countries classified as "emerging economies" by FTSE, including the "BRICS" nations of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. The Times Higher Education ranking methodology is drawn up using different performance indicators, including "Teaching", "Citations-Research Influence", "Industry Income", and "International Outlook". The ranking, adjusted for "emerging economies", gives a higher weighting to the "Industry Income" and "International Outlook" categories and a lower weighting to the "Citations-Research Influence" category.
In the Times Higher Education BRICS & Emerging Economies Rankings 2015, which recognizes institutions in 18 "emerging economies", ODTÜ is ranked 3rd , whereas China takes 1st and 2nd places. Apart from ODTÜ, seven other Turkish universities are listed in the top 100. Among those seven, Boğaziçi University was ranked 7th, ITU was ranked 8th , Sabancı University was ranked 15th , Bilkent University was ranked 19th, Koç University was ranked 29th, Istanbul University was ranked 51st, and Hacettepe University was ranked 82nd.
Further details about the rankings can be found at the following link.
_http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-university-rankings/2015/brics-and-emerging-economies
Movers and shakers, slow improvers and unexpected climbers
https://www.timeshighereducation.com/world-university-rankings/2015/brics-and-emerging-economies/analysis/movers-and-shakers-slow-improvers-and-unexpected-climbers
Of the BRICS nations, China stands out and Russia shows great potential, but other emerging economies are also gaining in strength.
China stands head and shoulders above the other large emerging BRIC economies – Brazil, Russia and India.
India has 11 universities (up from 10 last year) in the top 100, led by the Indian Institute of Science in 25th place. It is followed by Russia, which has seen huge improvements with seven institutions making the top 100 (up from just two last year). Brazil has four institutions in the top 100, with its number one, the University of São Paulo, moving into 10th place from 11th last year. South Africa, commonly added to the BRIC acronym of nations to make the “S” of BRICS, has five top-100 institutions, led by the University of Cape Town in fourth place.
China, for almost two decades, has had a coherent plan to build up its research universities to ‘world-class’ quality and it has devoted considerable resources to this. Now, perhaps 40 Chinese universities are serious research-intensive universities and the C9 group of top institutions have considerable potential to reach the top tier.”
The forecast is considerably less bright for the other big emerging economies. “The other BRIC countries – Brazil, Russia and India – are behind and show only limited potential for improvement in the short run,” Altbach says. “Brazil and India are basically doing nothing about improving their top universities. In Brazil, the national government has had no national higher education vision that would improve the research university sector. India has recently been thinking about how to improve the generally rather poor state of its universities, but has not implemented anything as yet.”
“Indian universities lack the autonomy needed to be world class. They are controlled so heavily by regulators and government, they cannot innovate, be current nor aspire to reach the top. They are also starved of adequate research funding. Unless these issues are settled urgently even hopes are optimistic.”
For Altbach, “Russia has the greatest potential” of the BRIC countries beyond China. “Russia builds on a strong academic tradition that has been neglected in recent years, and is engaging in several impressive efforts, including designating some of the top institutions as ‘national research universities’ and running a well-funded government scheme to support a small number of universities to build up their capacities for research and improve their status in the rankings,” he says.
Writing on our website, Russia’s deputy minister of education and science, Alexander Povalko, explains Russia’s “Project 5-100”, a campaign to help propel five Russian institutions into the top 100 of the global rankings. Under this project, additional resources are given to 14 institutions to help them improve their infrastructure, make strategic investments in research, internationalise the curriculum and foster new international collaborations.
Russia’s position looks stronger. Its top-ranked institution, Lomonosov Moscow State University, has risen from 10th last year to fifth this year, while Novosibirsk State University, thanks to a greatly improved score for research impact helped in part by the better integration with its local research institutions, has rocketed straight into 34th place, from outside the top 100 last year. Saint Petersburg State University has risen four places to joint 64th.
But there is also a great deal of dynamism outside the major BRIC economies. The list of emerging economies considered for this ranking was taken from the FTSE Group’s Annual Country Classification Review. The September 2014 list includes 21 countries classified as either “advanced emerging” (Brazil, Czech Republic, Hungary, Malaysia, Mexico, Poland, South Africa, Taiwan, Thailand and Turkey) or “secondary emerging” (Chile, China, Colombia, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Pakistan, Peru, Philippines, Russia, United Arab Emirates). For consistency with the 2014 rankings, Morocco has also been included in the analysis, as it was classified as a secondary-emerging economy last year. Of the 22 countries considered, only 18 countries make the top 100 list (Egypt, Indonesia, Peru and the Philippines do not appear in the rankings).
But one of the strongest performers in the 2015 THE BRICS & Emerging Economies Rankings is Turkey. It has eight institutions in the top 100, but they are concentrated in the higher echelons of the table, giving Turkey the highest average ranking score of any country. Indeed, three Turkish institutions make the top 10: its best performer is Middle East Technical University, in third place, followed by BoÄŸaziçi University in seventh and Istanbul Technical University in eighth.
Some of Turkey’s institutions have been given a boost to their research impact scores through their scholars’ involvement in the extremely high-impact research at the Large Hadron Collider at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (Cern), but they have also benefited from increased research spending in Turkey, says Abdullah Atalar, president of Turkey’s Bilkent University, which did not benefit from association with the Cern research.
The presence of non-profit private universities in addition to state universities provided a fruitful environment striving for excellence in research.”
A key lesson from Turkey, says Atalar – ““recognising the fact that a good university system is the key to sustainable economic growth” – should also have resonance throughout the developing world.
Moscow State University hits top 5 in Times Higher Education BRICS rating
http://in.rbth.com/society/2014/12/09/moscow_state_university_hits_top_5_in_times_higher_education_brics_ra_40231
Russian universities have made an important breakthrough in Britain’s 2015 Times Higher Education BRICS & Emerging Economies Rankings, with Moscow State University coming fifth in the rating.
The ranking – the second report of its kind by the influential international listing – was presented at the first BRICS Universities Summit in Moscow on Dec. 4.
China’s Peking University and Tsinghua University led the top five, in first and second place, respectively. They were followed by Middle East Technical University in Turkey (third place) and South Africa’s University of Cape Town (fourth). The best university in Brazil – the University of São Paulo – came tenth, and India’s best university – the Indian Institute of Science – took 25th.
In addition to the BRICS countries, universities from the Czech Republic, Poland, Mexico, Morocco, Thailand, Hungary, the United Arab Emirates, Malaysia, Taiwan (its rating is counted separately), and Pakistan also made it onto the list.
Altogether, seven Russian universities were in the top 100. Besides Moscow State University, they are: the National Research Nuclear University (13th); Novosibirsk State University (34th); St. Petersburg State University (64th); the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technologies (69th); the Ufa State Aviation Technical University (70th), and the Bauman Moscow State Technological University (90th).
Only two Russian universities made it into the 2014 Times Higher Education BRICS & Emerging Economies Rankings: Moscow State University (10th) and St. Petersburg State University (67th).
Britain’s Times Higher Education is one of the most influential international magazines on higher education. It compiles an annual world university ranking that, besides the QS World University Rankings and Shanghai’s Academic Ranking of World Universities, is considered one of the three most authoritative in the World.
Why do the BRICS countries need their own ranking?
Asked by RIR why the magazine has started ranking universities in emerging countries separately from the rest of the world, Times Higher Education Editor Phil Baty said that the main purpose is to help find new education leaders in countries that remain in the shadows of North America and Western Europe, which dominate the magazine’s main rankings.
"It's like switching on all electric lights, so we can see the rising stars. There is a sense that in the overall world rankings there are only 10 universities from the emerging economies visible in the world top 200. So what we are trying to say is that there are really dynamic and exciting universities in these regions that are crowded out from the ranking due to the dominance of the U.S. and Western Europe,” Baty explained.
However, Baty stressed that the decision to separate BRICS out into a different list does not make it “second-class,” because the emerging economies ranking utilizes the same criteria as the World ranking,
"We are able to put them into context. Not everyone is able to compete with Stanford or Oxford, so we are actually using the same system and benchmarks; we are able to give more data, more information on a larger range of universities and give a clearer picture of their potential and the place in the world,” Baty said.
A challenge to Western education?
According to Director of the Institute of the Institute of Education at the Higher School of Economics Isak Frumin, there is another important reason experts should pay attention to the BRICS & Emerging Economies Rankings. He thinks emerging countries might form a unique system of higher education in the future that will differ from the prevailing American-British system of today.
In countries like Russia and China, the governments are unsatisfied with the simple evolutionary development of their universities. They think the process is going too slowly, so they are picking out groups of universities where they will foster conditions for rapid development and invest heavily.
The purpose of these investments is to create world-class universities in short timeframes.
