GLOBAL: University rankings and system benchmarking reach similar results

Benoît Millot09 September 2012 Issue No:238

 

University International Rankings, or UIRs, have become a reality. And despite their shortcomings and the rise of resistance against them, they are likely to stick around.

Critics of UIRs target methodological weaknesses such as bias in favour of research, use of composite indicators, reliability of peers’ subjective opinions and so on.

But they also point out the perverse effect of UIRs on the decisions of tertiary education institutions and of national authorities in charge of tertiary education – racing to develop world-class universities at the expense of national tertiary education systems.

In reaction to these caveats, analysts have convincingly argued that instead of focusing on individual universities, it would be more useful to put the spotlight on entire tertiary education systems. Simultaneously, there should be a shift from ranking to benchmarking.

This twofold shift would allow countries to assess the health of their higher education systems and to design reforms encompassing all types of tertiary education institutions rather than focusing on a few centres of excellence.

Efforts are currently under way from various quarters to develop reliable International System Benchmarking (ISB) instruments, and the first comprehensive one of its kind has recently been released.

International rankings: Key results from the main leagues

In 2010 and 2011, the figures on which this analysis is based, the two UIRs most widely referred to by the academic community, analysts and decision-makers were arguably the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU), launched by Shanghai Jiao Tong University, and the one operated by Quacquarelli Symonds under the auspices of Times Higher Education. (The THE ranking is now operated by Thomson Reuters and QS continues to run its own ranking.)

In 2010 and 2011, the 500 top universities for each ranking are concentrated in 50 countries in the QS league and in 39 countries in the more exclusive ARWU league.

All but two countries hosting the top universities in the ARWU league are also present in the QS league, which is a first (and strong) hint that the two rankings yield close results. A subset of 37 countries appear in both leagues.

In order to make comparisons between countries, we cannot be satisfied with the sheer number of top universities – this number needs to be weighted in order to control for the size of the countries.

One possibility would be to use each country’s population, but this is not fully satisfactory because it ignores intergenerational differences. Instead, we use the number of people of tertiary age as a weight. The ratio of the number of 500 top universities to the tertiary-age population gives us what could be labelled the ‘density of top universities’.

Density gives an idea of the number of top universities available per one million people of tertiary age. In fact, using the ARWU data for illustration purposes, it is clear that the number of top universities and their density follow almost opposite tracks.

Of the 25 countries with the highest density of top universities, 23 are to be found in both the QS and ARWU rankings – an observation that confirms the first hint mentioned above regarding the convergence of the two leagues.

Secondly, the rankings of countries by density of top universities are very closely correlated for QS and ARWU.

With the exception of Ireland, which is number one in the QS league and only number 13 in the ARWU league, most countries have a similar position in the two rankings, and the values of the density ratios in the two leagues are also very close for each individual country. Hence, despite their different approaches, the two leagues yield highly comparable results.

Also, all the 37 countries but one (India) are either high-income or upper-middle income. This observation substantiates the assertion that UIRs’ methodology is putting a premium on well-resourced universities.

On the other hand, even within the group of less than 40 countries that harbour the top world universities, there is a huge gap between those leading the flock and those at the lagging end: while in Finland, two world-class universities serve 100,000 tertiary age people, in India two world-class universities cater to 100 million potential clients.

Indeed, there is a strong and positive correlation between the density of top universities and gross domestic product per capita.

Despite significant differences in the way they are developed, the QS and ARWU rankings do share some common points, in particular the size of the universe that they cover (focusing on the top 500 universities) and their reliance on a range of indicators encompassing several areas of academic life.

This is not the case for a relative newcomer to the field, the Webometrics ranking, which considers a universe of more than 12,000 institutions worldwide, and relies on several aspects of the visibility of institutions on the internet.

Given such a disparity in the methodology, one would expect widely different results in the rankings. Surprisingly, the comparison made on the 500 top universities of the three leagues shows strikingly similar results, and the correlations between the three rankings are significant and positive.

There are therefore strong indications that three of the major and most popular UIRs have converging results both in terms of the set of countries hosting ‘world-class’ universities and in terms of the rankings of countries within this set.

International system benchmarking

The purpose and focus of ISBs are quite distinct from the ones explicit in UIRs, as mentioned above. The former targets country systems and vows to assess their performance against set criteria, while the latter focuses on individual institutions.

Although the need for ISB instruments was identified long ago, few practical attempts have been made to implement them. Statistical challenges account for this situation.

Following the policy brief prepared for the Lisbon Council covering 17 countries, the work undertaken by the OECD, and the World Bank’s benchmarking of universities in the Middle East and North Africa, the first genuinely comprehensive ISB – the U21 Ranking of National Higher Education Systems – was developed by the Melbourne Institute in 2012.

U21 is based on four sets of indicators: resources, environment, connectivity and output.

Five straightforward indicators, linked to the financial resources allocated to tertiary education, are used to assess the performance in the first area (resources).

The main novelty of the U21 lies in its use of indicators designed to characterise the environment, particularly the subset of indicators related to the ‘qualitative measure of the policy and regulatory environment’. These represent significant progress because they respond to the widespread view that governance issues are a main constraint to the development and improvement of tertiary education systems.

Connectivity, the third area considered by U21, is measured by two highly relevant indicators: (i) the proportion of international students in tertiary education, and (ii) the proportion of articles co-authored with international collaborators.

Output, the fourth area under U21, is measured by a basket of nine indicators spanning a whole range of criteria from research products to enrolment rates and graduate unemployment rates, the latter indicator being an answer to the growing concern regarding the employability of graduates produced by tertiary education systems.

Rankings are provided separately for each of the four areas mentioned above. Finally, an overall, composite indicator is constructed by combining the four sets of indicators.

Comparing UIR and ISB

Comparing the outcomes of the UIR and ISB instruments is made possible by the fact that we have translated the results of the university-based indicators of the UIRs in countrywide terms, making them analogous to the indicators of the ISB.

The comparison is presented here in two steps: (i) how do the sets of countries compare – regardless of their individual rankings, and (ii) how do the rankings compare?

While the countries covered in the three versions of UIRs (QS, ARWU and Webometrics) are the results of university rankings, those considered by U21 are a deliberate choice, itself linked to a predetermined decision.

U21 selected a set of 48 countries, using data from the National Science Foundation (NSF) ranking of research output. It is therefore not a surprise to find a strong overlap between these 48 U21 countries and the 39 and 50 countries that host top universities according to ARWU and QS, respectively, or indeed to the 37 countries to be found in both UIRs.

The main differences between the group of UIR countries (and especially the more inclusive QS list) and that of the U21 are: (i) the lesser representation of developing countries in the U21 list, and (ii) the stronger presence of Eastern Europe countries in the U21 list. These differences aside, there is strong convergence between the UIRs and U21.

However, the decisive test is not the aggregate number of countries represented in both lists, but the rank of the countries. There are highly significant correlations in rankings, which show that the two instruments yield similar results.

However, differences are also to be noted, especially in the dispersion of votes for the countries ranked first – while Finland is ranked in the top four in all three leagues, Ireland is ranked first by QS but lags at 13 and 16 in the ARWU and U21 lists, respectively.

Even more striking, while the United States leads the pack in the U21 list, it is relegated to ranks 17 and 22 in the ARWU and QS leagues, respectively.

Still, there is a lot of stability in the rankings for most other countries, and the superposition of the three lists shows remarkable homogeneity.

QS and ARWU produce very close results, which are also confirmed by the Webometrics league, despite the differences in methodology used by these three UIRs. In all three rankings, the density of top 500 universities (‘world-class’ universities) is closely related to the wealth of the countries.

Comparing these results with those obtained by the U21 ranking – the first comprehensive ISB – yields strikingly similar results, even though the focus and objectives of the ISB are clearly different from those of the UIRs.

It appears that hosting world-class universities is associated with the position held in system-wide rankings. Both kinds of instruments analysed in this note suggest that being in a rich country helps both to boost the supply of high quality universities and to maintain a performing system of tertiary education.

Part of the explanation for this finding comes from the bias common to the two instruments – that is, an overemphasis on research and on well-resourced systems.

Despite this, it remains that these results reflect both the choices made by universities themselves and tertiary education decision-makers at the national level, and the fact that money can buy quality.

From a methodological point of view, it can be concluded that the empirical implementation of the concepts that radically differentiate the two instruments end up – so far – with very similar outcomes.

Undoubtedly, as data availability increases, both rankings and benchmarking will improve, and their respective outcomes will become more and more complementary.

* Benoît Millot is a former lead education economist with the World Bank and is currently a consultant with the same institution. This article does not represent the views of the World Bank and is the sole responsibility of the author.

GLOBAL: Relax – Higher education won't be killed by MOOCs

Stephen H Foerster09 September 2012 Issue No:238

 

In a recent University World News commentary titled, “Yes, MOOC is the global higher education game changer”, Professor Simon Marginson from the Centre for the Study of Higher Education at the University of Melbourne argues that MOOCs will spell the death of higher education as we know it.

That may be an exciting thing to say – but there are some fundamental barriers involved that will be pretty challenging to overcome.

As someone who has worked in online education for a long time, I can assure any and all that not every student prefers to learn online, even if from a course that carries the imprimatur of a well-regarded university.

There's nothing wrong with online learning. Indeed, research has shown pretty conclusively that there's no significant difference in learning outcomes between learning on campus and learning online.

But just because two things are adequate substitutes for each other doesn't mean that all people will prefer the two equally. Especially when students have been raised to see higher education as a classroom-based activity with a tweed-clad professor at a lectern, they're likely to retain that as a preference even in the wake of a mountain of evidence that it is not strictly necessary.

Wide acceptance of online learning

The good news is that unreasonable objections to online learning have largely become muted in the wake of repeated studies showing that distance learning is no less effective than classroom-based instruction.

But while prejudice against distance learning has lost the day, this does not mean that there aren't many students whose needs are better accommodated by a course that takes place on campus.

For example, many institutions focus on asynchronous learning when it comes to their distance learning offerings. That means that courses are designed for convenience so that students can participate whenever it's convenient for them rather than at a set time.

The trade-off for that convenience is live interaction, the sort that's part and parcel of a course in a classroom. It's possible to duplicate live sessions online, and more and more institutions are moving in that direction, but at present those students who are inclined towards real-time interaction with their faculty members and peers are likely still to have reason to prefer the classroom.

Moreover, it's not only the ‘online’ aspect of MOOCs that can be offputting – the ‘massive’ one can be as well. In a course with tens of thousands of students, it's hardly realistic to expect personal attention from the rock star professor whose name is on the marquee.

That's not to say the sort of peer-to-peer learning that MOOCs by necessity employ is pedagogically unsound; far from it. But it's not a mode of learning that's universally appealing, and a prestigious university name can only go so far to paper over the objections from a student who would like the option of directly communicating with his or her instructor.

The academic credit barrier

Another fundamental barrier is that MOOCs from prestigious universities do not lead to academic credit, and this is an important drawback to them that their cheerleaders need to consider a little more closely. Moreover, if I may be allowed a prediction, they never will lead to credit, especially from top universities.

As much as educators may not wish to admit it, from an economic perspective education is not actually a university's true product: a prestigious credential is.

When employers start accepting MOOC certificates of completion as the equivalent to a university degree, then one will be able to consider them a substitute. Until then, however, one simply cannot. It's true that there's a movement toward educational badges (see below), but it's in its infancy, and if they do take off in the marketplace for labour, it won't be tomorrow.

As evidence, for several decades now in the computing world there has been a system of what those in the education world are calling 'educational badges'. There is a large ecology of certifications that technology workers can earn that demonstrate their proficiency with various information technologies.

Many of these certification programmes are administered from companies like Microsoft or Cisco, and are specific to the products of those companies. Other programmes are from ‘vendor neutral’ non-profit organisations like CompTIA and concern themselves with a broader category of technologies.

Those who are watching MOOCs closely may be interested in the relationship that has developed between the world of ICT certifications and that of higher education.

In the 1990s there was something of a competitive aspect between them, where technology workers might consider an advanced level Microsoft certification just as useful to them in the labour market as a degree in information systems.

Before long, however, the higher education system prevailed, not because workers or employers lost interest in certifications, but because higher education adapted to allow for ways to include them in its own system.

Higher education adapts

The adaptation was that it became possible to earn advanced standing at certain universities for those who held certain certifications. In some cases, universities would recognise these certifications as the equivalent to transfer credit, accepting them as though the transferring student had simply taken academic coursework elsewhere.

In other cases, and this is the example more likely to apply to MOOCs, those certifications fit into those universities' established systems of prior learning assessment, wherein students who learn university-level material outside of the institution can put together a portfolio of evidence that, if approved, leads to advanced standing.

It is this process, prior learning assessment, that would seem to be the best way for successful MOOC-takers to move forward if they wish for broad recognition of their learning, and the best way for universities to fit MOOCs into their established system of credit.

I hope I don't sound dismissive of MOOCs, as that's not my intention. MOOCs are a wonderful new tool in the toolbox of adult education. I'm pleased that universities are offering them. In fact I'm doing one myself later this year.

But as exciting as they are, they cannot be all things to all people, and local universities are in no danger whatsoever of being supplanted by them, at least not any time soon.

It would be a shame if this false expectation overshadowed the real opportunities that MOOCs can and do provide, and caused unwarranted disappointment when the initial enthusiasm for MOOCs dies away and it becomes clear that they are not an educational panacea.

* Stephen H Foerster is a writer, technologist and educator based in the US and the Commonwealth of Dominica.

UNITED KINGDOM: Legal challenge to international student ban slapped on university

David Jobbins04 September 2012 Issue No:238

 

The UK university barred from teaching students from outside the European Union (EU) is to challenge the decision in court by the end of this week.

Professor Malcolm Gillies, vice-chancellor of London Metropolitan University (LMU), told the BBC flagship Today programme on Tuesday that it was seeking to have the revocation of its Highly Trusted Status by the UK Border Agency (UKBA) stayed.

“Our analysis with leading immigration lawyers indicates this report of the UKBA is wrong in so many details,” Gillies said. “We have an obligation to go to court.”

Loss of Highly Trusted Status (HTS), under which universities are required to vet applicants from outside the EU to ensure they meet immigration requirements, means that up to 2,700 current LMU students face deportation if they cannot find an alternative university at which to continue their studies by the end of November.

Gillies told the BBC: “We fundamentally contest their claim that there is a systemic failure here.”

He accepted that the decision by the UKBA, announced on 30 August, had done “huge damage” to LMU.

It had also done “a lot of damage to the credibility of British higher education”.

LMU said that the evidence it provided to the UKBA clearly showed that “on file after file we were taking every reasonable measure we could to be compliant”. The UKBA claim that LMU did not address serious and systemic failings identified six months ago was “simply not true”.

It said its checks on international students for English language and educational ability not only met but exceeded the UKBA requirements in a number of key areas.

“The university's staff has been diligently performing stringent checks to try and ensure that all individuals who are studying at the university are legally entitled to do so.

"The UKBA has not provided any constructive advice to the sector on this matter, despite being asked to on numerous occasions.”

The university believes that its monitoring complies with the UKBA's guidance and accused UKBA officers of ignoring information that was made available to them when they conducted their audit.

“Despite our concerns, we cooperated and assisted them fully and tried to persuade them on a number of occasions to review evidence that we felt was relevant.”

LMU claimed that the UKBA's requirements had changed substantially at least 14 times in the past three years.

“We believe the university's approach to complying with this multitude of changes is of a standard that not only equates with practices adopted by the majority of other universities in the sector but in a number of key areas exceeds sector-wide practice.”

This week the powerful House of Commons public accounts committee criticised the UKBA for disrupting the student visa system with “poorly planned and ill thought-out” changes in the rules for overseas students.

As a result an extra 50,000 people abused the system, coming to Britain to work rather than study, it said.

The committee of MPs said in a report published on Monday that the UKBA had enforced new rules for overseas students in 2009 before controls were in place. The result was a "difficult and costly" three years as the agency tried to amend the rules to clamp down on abuse.

It is against this background that vice-chancellors have expressed concern at the decision to make LMU the first university to lose its HTS.

On the same day, Immigration Minister Damian Green told MPs: “The UKBA found systemic failures that meant that London Met had not been able to ensure the appropriate admission and tracking of students from abroad.”

Green said that two other unidentified universities had their licences to admit overseas students temporarily suspended after UKBA investigations, but added that both had resolved their problems and were no longer suspended.

On 30 August David Willetts, the universities minister, announced that a task force led by the Higher Education Funding Council for England – and which includes Universities UK, the UKBA and the National Union of Students – would start immediately to support affected students and enable genuine students to find another institution at which they could continue their studies in the UK.

A ‘clearing house’ set up by LMU will support students wishing to transfer from that university to an alternative education provider or institution. It is to operate from 17 September and will offer every LMU international undergraduate student affected by the revocation decision a course or courses to which they can apply.

The task force said after its second meeting on Wednesday that the courses offered would be comparable in cost and curriculum, and the providers will be quality assured so that students can be confident that their learning experience will continue to meet high standards.

Providers will be based in London wherever possible in order to minimise disruption to students’ accommodation and transport arrangements.

The start of the clearing house has been put back, however, because of LMU’s legal challenge to the revocation of HTS. If the university wins a stay, the revocation will be set aside pending a further hearing and the university will be able, and will want, to continue to teach its current international students.

But the task force acknowledged the risk that later legal hearings might lead to the re-imposition of the revocation, creating a risk that students could have their studies disrupted in the course of the academic year.

Therefore, if the revocation is set aside, the task force may seek a guarantee that students will be allowed to complete their programmes at LMU for the whole of the academic year 2012-13. Any decision then taken to confirm revocation would be implemented in full only from 1 August 2013.

But if the UKBA and the government cannot agree to that solution and the risk of in-year disruption persists, students will be given the option of moving to another institution.

The potential for wider damage to the UK's international student recruitment was illustrated on 31 August when City University found itself named as the UKBA's target in China due to the similarity of its and LMU's titles in Mandarin.

It was wrongly named, by the Chinese national broadcaster, as the university stripped of its trusted status.

City University said: We are aware there may be some confusion around the translation of City University. There are two universities which use this name in Mandarin Chinese – City University London and LMU."

It stated it retained its HTS, enabling it to recruit and teach students in the UK.
 

INDIA: Poor quality and too few seats push 600,00 students abroad

Alya Mishra09 September 2012 Issue No:238

 

Inadequate higher education infrastructure and poor quality courses are pushing 600,000 Indian students to top universities overseas – and are costing the country around Rs950 billion (US$17 billion) in foreign exchange annually – a study has found.

The study, “Higher Education Scenario in India”, was conducted by the Associated Chamber of Commerce and Industry of India, or ASSOCHAM, and is yet to be published.

It found that most Indian students go abroad because they do not find seats in quality institutions within the country. The huge capacity constraint in quality higher education could be tackled through public-private partnership models, the study suggested.

Competing for too few seats

With an aspiring middle-class, the limited number of quality higher education institutions is failing dismally to meet demand.

In 2012, 500,000 students sat the entrance exam for 9,590 seats at Indian institutes of technology (IITs), India’s premier technical colleges. The Indian institutes of management (IIMs) received close to 200,000 applications for 15,500 seats.

Notably, in 2011 Sri Ram College of Commerce (SRCC), one of the leading commerce colleges in the country, set a minimum marks cut-off for admission of 100% for students with science subjects. Anything less than a perfect score would disqualify an applicant.

The move outraged students and sparked debate about access and quality in higher education. According to the SRCC principal, PC Jain, the problem lies in the supply of and demand for higher education.

“The number of students who score 90% and above is increasing every year. But we have a limited number of seats. If everyone applies for SRCC then we have to find a way to limit the number,” said Jain.

“We need more quality higher education institutions since the number of students graduating from school with good performance is surging every year.”

In 1987, when a million students took grade 12 exams, SRCC had 800 seats. In 2011, 10.1 million students wrote grade 12 exams but the college had the same number of seats.

Struggling to achieve quality

Even if more seats were available, students who have experienced a foreign education said they would rather go abroad for the academic and cultural experiences, than study in India.

“Even average institutions in the US and UK are better than most colleges in India. Critical thinking, freedom to express your thoughts and to interact with faculty members, and inter-disciplinary studies is what distinguishes many foreign universities from their Indian counterparts,” said Shaleeni Chopra, a postgraduate of the University of Sussex in the UK.

According to experts, even if universities began strengthening the quality of education, it would be a very long time before the tide of students going abroad could be arrested.

“The role of universities is to produce knowledge, apply knowledge to research and build an academic culture,” said Professor MK Sridhar, member secretary and executive director of the Karnataka Knowledge Commission, a think-tank under the chief minister’s office.

“Unless universities re-orient themselves, embrace technology and open their doors to competitive research and faculty building, India will keep losing students and professionals to foreign universities, which provide students and teachers with a richer academic environment,” Sridhar said.

Caught in red tape

According to the ASSOCHAM study, higher education in India is subsidised enough by the government to attract students, provided that they gain admission to quality institutions.

“An IIT student pays an average US$150 monthly fee, while students opting for education in institutions in Australia, Canada, Singapore, the US and UK shell out US$1,500 to US$4,000 in fees every month,” said ASSOCHAM Secretary General DS Rawat.

“Demand for education loans has also been increasing by over 20% annually,” he said.

The paper suggested that India set up more quality institutions along the lines of IITs and IIMs to ease the outflow of students.

Notably, under the 11th Five Year Plan from 2007-12, the government announced the setting up of 51 publicly funded higher education institutions – including eight IITs and seven IIMs.

Most of the proposed institutions have been plagued by setbacks, including delays in land acquisition, shortages of qualified faculty and, in several cases, disputes between the central government and states.

Sriram Kelkar, an associate professor at the University of Hyderabad, said universities needed more autonomy in order to innovate and experiment, to attract students and achieve internationally competitive standards.

“Just providing funds for expansion is not the answer. Norms for hiring faculty need to be liberalised so that fresh talent can be brought in. The conventional teaching and grading systems need to be re-looked at and teachers need to be given more autonomy.

“Only then can we compete with our global counterparts,” Kelkar said.

UNITED STATES: Most university heads optimistic about future – Survey

The Chronicle of Higher Education 09 September 2012 Issue No:238

 

US higher education administrators have mixed and even contradictory views about the financial future of their institutions. While the economy continues to recover at a sluggish pace, 57% of respondents in KPMG’s new Higher Education Outlook Survey said they expected their college to be in better financial shape in five years, writes Eric Kelderman for The Chronicle of Higher Education.

What the colleges represented in the survey did to survive the recession includes measures that have become standard parts of the higher education landscape. More than half raised tuition fees, 45% delayed capital projects, and more than a third offered more online classes and cut programmes with low enrolments. The survey also revealed the shifting priorities of higher education, with more than 60% of respondents saying that student retention and graduation would be a priority in the future. And more than 40% said their institutions would be focusing on online learning.

Full report on The Chronicle of Higher Education site
 

UNITED KINGDOM: Access chief warns elite universities over intake

Guardian09 September 2012 Issue No:238

 

The government's university access tsar has warned Oxford and Cambridge that they risk losing their status as world-class universities if they fail to widen their entry to include more students from state schools, writes Peter Wilby for the Guardian.

In the first interview since his controversial appointment last spring Les Ebdon, who started work as the new head of the Office for Fair Access (OFFA) last Monday, told the Guardian: "If the top universities are to retain their positions, they need to access the full range of our society. Otherwise, they are losing a major source of potential."

Both Oxford and Cambridge take more than 40% of their entrants from fee-charging schools, which educate only 7% to 8% of children.

The government's selection of Ebdon was opposed by Conservative Party backbenchers who thought him a hardline advocate of ‘social engineering’. As vice-chancellor of Bedfordshire University, Ebdon recruited nearly all his students from state schools to study subjects such as journalism, sport and social work.

Full report on the Guardian site 

Harvard students fight cheating allegations

Bloomberg Businessweek09 September 2012 Issue No:238

 

Harvard University students under investigation for cheating on a take-home government course exam said they’re waging a battle against the allegations, writes John Lauerman for Bloomberg Businessweek.

About 20 students and graduates have gone to the media to tell their side of the story, saying skipping classes, sharing notes and collaborating on tests were all tacitly condoned by the professor and teaching fellows of the course being probed. The probe involves about 125 students over cheating on a take-home exam for the course “Introduction to Congress”.

Harvard officials called it the biggest such probe in living memory. The students who are talking said they want to remain anonymous because of concern the accusations could affect their degrees or jobs taken since graduating. One 2012 graduate said losing his bachelor degree in economics might cost him his position at a Wall Street finance firm. 

Full report on the Bloomberg Businessweek site

 

Harvard University students under investigation for cheating on a take-home government course exam said they’re waging a battle against the allegations. 

About 20 students and graduates have gone to the media to tell their side of the story, saying skipping classes, sharing notes and collaborating on tests were all tacitly condoned by the professor and teaching fellows of the course being probed, students who took the class said.

The probe involves about 125 students over cheating on a take-home exam for the course, called Introduction to Congress. Harvard officials called it the biggest such probe in living memory. The students who are talking said they want to remain anonymous because of concern the accusations could affect their degrees or jobs taken since graduating. One 2012 graduate said losing his bachelor’s degree in economics might cost him his position at a Wall Street finance firm.
“Harvard went public with their version of the story, the version that looks good for the school,” a Harvard senior said. “We’re trying to present the other side.”

A Harvard e-mail to the 2012 graduate previewed his hearing before the Administrative Board, a college disciplinary body, for cheating on the final exam. The process of responding to a complaint to the board takes about two weeks, according to the letter.

‘Very Unfair’

“There was a tone set by the nature of the class and the professor teaching the course that collaboration was OK,” the graduate said in a telephone interview. “Dragging us into this investigation now, when we have financial obligations and jobs, seems very unfair.”

Harvard said last week that each of the students and graduates under investigation will be called before the Administrative Board. Students found to have cheated on exams can be asked to withdraw for two semesters, or may receive a warning or be put on probation, Jay Harris, Harvard’s dean of undergraduate education, said in an interview last week. Some students may be exonerated, Harris said. He wouldn’t say whether the board would consider taking away graduates’ degrees.
No cases have been heard yet, Harris said. Officials declined to say which course the students were in because the board’s proceedings are confidential. Students and graduates are also prohibited from discussing their cases in public, he said.

Students said the course in question was “Introduction to Congress,” which had 279 enrolled in the semester ending in May. Freshmen through seniors were all represented in the class taught by Matthew Platt, an assistant professor. He declined to comment when reached by telephone last week and didn’t respond to a call yesterday.

Suspicious Similarities

Harvard is investigating whether the students inappropriately collaborated on the take-home exam, Harris said. A teaching fellow in the course noticed in May that many of the turned-in exams contained suspicious similarities, and an analysis of all the course’s exams led to the Administrative Board actions, he said.

“Academic integrity is very important at Harvard, as are fairness and due process,” Jeff Neal, a spokesman for Harvard said in an e-mail. “We expect to learn more about the way the course was organized and how work was approached in class and on the take-home final,” and the process will “take time and require patience,” he said.

Platt is known as a good lecturer who kept the course entertaining, said a senior who took the course and wanted to remain anonymous. The course is widely considered to be easy, the senior said.

‘120 A’s’

“Platt said, ‘I gave out 120 A’s last year and I’ll give out 120 A’s this year,”’ the senior said. “I’m taking a lot of difficult courses, so I take my A’s where I can get them.”

Platt said in class that he didn’t mind whether lectures were skipped, the students said. Students frequently shared lecture notes, which probably contributed to the similarities in people’s answers, those who took the course said.

“That’s how people understood this course worked,” the senior said.
Platt’s exam instructions say that “students may not discuss the exam with others -- this includes resident tutors, writing centers, etc.” That contradicts the way the course was actually conducted, students said.

Students consult Harvard’s Q guide to get previous course- takers’ reviews. Q guide reviews say that collaboration was accepted in Platt’s course, students said.

 

Ex-Harvard scientist found guilty of misconduct

The Boston Globe09 September 2012 Issue No:238

 

Marc Hauser, a prolific scientist and popular psychology professor who resigned last summer from Harvard University, had fabricated data, manipulated results in multiple experiments, and incorrectly described how studies were conducted, according to the findings of a federal research oversight agency that were posted online on Wednesday, writes Carolyn Y Johnson for The Boston Globe.

The report details the problems that triggered a three-year university investigation that concluded in 2010 that Hauser, a star professor and public intellectual, had committed scientific misconduct. The document, which was to be published in the Federal Register last Thursday, lists six cases in which Hauser engaged in research misconduct in work supported by the National Institutes of Health.

Hauser agreed to a number of restrictions for three years, including a ban on serving as an advisor to the US Public Health Service, a requirement that any work he does with funding from that agency be supervised, and that an institution vouch for the validity of any such research.

Full report on The Boston Globe site