NTU may have fallen for the third consecutive year in a recent universities ranking, but university officials here are taking the results with a pinch of salt.
According to the survey by The Times of London Higher Education, made public on October 11th, the university fell eight places to the 77th position out of 200 universities worldwide.
The Straits Times reported that Quacquarelli Symonds, which compiled The Times of Higher London Education rankings, attributed the drop to a low number of citations gathered by faculty members.
NTU’s academic publications were also not cited as often by other academic institutions.
But NTU Provost Bertil Andersson said this drop in rankings “cannot be mathematically possible”.
This is because the university improved or remained the same in five out of the six criteria used in the ranking. These are: academic peer review, employer review, faculty to student ratio, citations per faculty, international faculty and international students.
Out of the six categories, academic peer review constitutes the highest weightage of 40 per cent. Citations per faculty constitute 20 per cent, international staff and students each constitute five per cent.
The university believes that though ranking status is important, the survey should be taken with a pinch of salt.
A university spokesperson said The Times is not an academic authority in university ranking, but a commercial newspaper. Moreover, it does not take into consideration that new schools are set up.
The drop worried students such as Lim Xian Zhi, 22, a second-year Mechanical Engineering student.
“It does worry me because I think the ranking of the university has some impact on whether you get the job, especially when you are competing with students from top universities.” he said.
But the university spokesperson said ranking should not be the main concern as the univerisity sets its sight globally and should concentrate on quality research and teaching.
Provost Andersson is also confident of the university’s established reputation in the world and its excellent research work.
“NTU is on a fantastic upswing as judged by its perception in the world and the readiness for top scientists and top students to join the university,” he said.
Some students see the quality of students rather than university ranking as what companies consider more.
Ermin Tham, 22, a second-year business student, said: “I think ultimately the university trains us to be effective in whichever disciplines we are pursuing, and I think that is what employers are looking out for rather than the ranking.”
