kathy

My dear ISB2 SENIORS,

 

 I just read this email
this night (Nov.18, 2006 9:52PM) and I feel the need to share this with you.
It’s not that I’m being defensive or anything, I just think you might read
through this first before you make any judgments on what you hear or read about
university rankings, particularly my alma mater the Ateneo, and especially now that you will soon be
choosing which school to go to for your college education.

 Patiently read all these
please; it’s a bit long but worth your time reading.

Thanks!

 

Teacher Kathy
J

 

 

A response to the THES World University Rankings

date posted: 2006-11-17 10:37:05
http://www.ateneo. edu/index.
php?p=120&type=2&sec=31&aid=2989

(Note: On Oct. 5, 2006, a global survey of higher educational institutions —
the Times Higher Education Supplement - Quacquarelli Symonds [THES-QS]

World

University

Rankings — was released. Among thousands of universities surveyed, 4 from the

Philippines

made it to the top 500. These are the University of the

Philippines

[299th], De La Salle University
[392nd], Ateneo de Manila University [484th], and the

University

of

Santo Tomas

[500th]. [The complete results are posted in QS Top Universities Website.] To enlighten the community
regarding the results of the THES survey, the University President writes the
following response .)

The context of the
Times rankings is the process of internationalization of universities; in
particular, they are intended for students looking for places abroad to study.
Ateneo understands that internationalization in the university is important in
our globalizing world and, thus, we understand the purpose of these rankings.
However, each university and each country have their own priorities. The priority in the vision/mission of the Ateneo has
been the formation of leaders in Christian and Jesuit values and contribution
to overcoming poverty and national development. Thus, we have
responded to internationalization by what is the most advanced student mobility and study abroad program in the country.

• JGSOM’s Junior Term Abroad
       creates opportunities for college juniors to spend one semester in any of
       the Ateneo’s many partner universities. This year, 114 Ateneo college
       students are spending a semester in universities in Asia (particularly

  China

  ,

  Japan

  ,
      

  Singapore

  ), in Europe
       and the

  United States

  .
       We will have 150 students annually in study abroad programs in the next
       two years and this will continue to grow. 

• We have students from the
       Schools of Science and Engineering, Social Sciences, Humanities and the
       Graduate School of Business who also spend a semester or year abroad. We
       also have summer student cultural programs to Europe (through our European
       Studies Program) and Asia (particularly Macau, Hong Kong, and

  China

  ). In
       the next years, we want to tap more partners in these countries and to go
       into new partnership agreements with other countries in Europe, (

  Spain

  , the

  Netherlands

  ,
      

  Belgium

  , and

  Germany

  ) and Asia (

  Malaysia

  ,

  Taiwan

  ,
       and

  Thailand

  ).
      

• Those who cannot go abroad are
       offered the opportunity of studying with foreign classmates through our
       inbound students. Our agreements have also allowed us to host a mix of
       international students on campus from China, Indonesia, Malaysia,
       Singapore, France, Germany, the US, Japan, Macau, Vietnam, Cambodia, and
       Myanmar. 

These programs follow our priority of leadership formation,
since we believe that leaders of tomorrow will have to be increasingly global
in their perspective. We do receive international students. However, a focus on
attracting foreign students (the purpose of the Times rankings) has been a
secondary priority for us. 

From our international exchanges, we see that we are highly
respected among those who have come to know us. Just in the last few months, when
China decided to set up Confucius Institutes for the teaching of Chinese
language and culture in about 100 universities around the world, the Ateneo de
Manila was the first (and so far the only) university designated in the
Philippines. In addition, the World Press Photojournalism Institute in the

Netherlands

has
also chosen the Ateneo as partner for its program in photojournalism. We will
exert more effort to better communicate this to the outside world. Our alumni
abroad can help us a lot in this regard. 

There are other efforts to increase the number and quality
of our active international partnerships and programs. We have been
benchmarking for quality (IEEE standards for ECCE, attendance of conferences,
networks) and sending our students to regional competitions, among others.
However, because of our small size and relatively few programs until recently,
our international reach has been limited. In surveys like this, size matters,
both in the number of students and the diversity of programs. 

In a world dominated by science and technology, it was only
in the last ten years or so that the Ateneo has established itself in science
and technology. We were thus small, both in terms of number of students and
diversity of programs. But we must also remember that it was this small size
and the focus on formation and the core curriculum (esp. philosophy, theology,
literature) that our alumni treasure most. It is to the formation they obtained
in this focus of the Ateneo that they attribute their own growth in leadership.
Thus, while the smallness makes us less
widely known outside the

Philippines

,
the same characteristic has formed important leaders in business and government
in our country and has established Ateneo as a well-known and great school in
the

Philippines

.

Today, we are a University of about 7,585 undergraduates and
3,300 graduate students. Relative to its size, the proportion of Ateneo
graduates in local and regional leadership positions in the academe,
government, and business is impressive. We have a growing number of alumni
abroad who have become leaders in the international world. We believe that a
great part of their success comes from Ateneo’s focus on formation and on core
curriculum courses such as philosophy and theology. As mentioned above, we are
becoming better known through our growing international contacts and through
our students studying abroad; our culture of forming leaders and contributing
to national development is highly respected. 

The area of research, particularly research published in ISI
journals, is an area where we realize we have to do much more. The tradition of
the Ateneo de Manila, and the tradition of the great majority of universities
until the last few decades, has been that of preparing leaders for society. In
recent decades, the role of the leading universities has moved towards the
creation of new knowledge, namely research. The Ateneo de Manila, in particular
the Loyola Schools, has invested much to increase research efforts. We have
chosen certain areas where we feel we can make a significant difference, and we
are excellent in these areas. But we realize that much more needs to be done.
This will require, however, careful discussion and planning, because we do not
want to lose focus on our priority goals of leadership formation and
contribution to national development. These latter goals, we believe, are still
Ateneo’s most important contribution to the

Philippines

. 

The rankings challenge us to improve our efforts in
internationalizatio n and research, but it has to be recognized that the
criteria, purpose, and survey instrument (please refer to Notes below) also do
not reflect certain aspects that make the Ateneo an excellent Philippine
university. As mentioned above, the formation of leaders and contributing to
national development is our priority; however, these priority concerns of ours
are not given weight in the Times rankings. 

Rankings in the Times survey are important because they
measure how the world perceives us. But just as a person has to take what
people think of them in the context of their own values and priorities, we,
too, have to reflect on these perceptions and measures within our own view of
our vision and mission. Thus, while we will work on strengthening our research
and publications in ISI journals (because these are the dominant measures in
the Times and other surveys), we need to do this in a way that does not move us
away from our vision/mission and our traditional strengths: leadership
formation and contribution to national development. These have to continue to be our priorities as a Jesuit university
committed to the service of faith and the promotion of justice and as a
university in a

Philippines

,
whose greatest challenge is overcoming poverty and national development.

Notes:

The survey
criteria:

Peer Review
- 40% (name recall and contacts)
Recruiter Review - 10%
International Faculty Score - 5%
International Students Score - 5%
Faculty/Student Score - 20%
Citations/Faculty Score - 20% (number of researches in ISI journals and/or the
number of times publications have been cited by other work) 

The survey
asked the Ateneo to supply only the following:

1. Number of faculty
(teachers, teaching assistants, full time equivalent)
2. Number of international faculty
3. Number of undergraduate students
4. Number of international undergraduate students
5. Average course fees per year for an undergraduate course
6. Average course fees per year for an international undergraduate
7. Number of postgraduate students
8. Number of international postgraduate students
9. Average course fees per year for a postgraduate course
10. Average course fees per year for an international postgraduate
11. Library expenditure for the most recent academic year
12. Average entry requirements for an undergraduate course
13. Percentage of graduates employed six (6) months post-graduation