Dear Wei Li
Welcome to ClassACT, a monthly e-zine by Nanyang Technological University (NTU).
This month, we read about a new ratings system which awarded NTU 5 stars, making it the only local university to achieve this stature. With this new achievement, NTU enters the same league as other internationally acclaimed universities.
But that's not the best part. The best part was the article lead.
Right. NTU's a fine university, but please do not compare it to Cambridge or Stanford. It's like trying to say the S-League is on the same level as the Barclays Premier League.
And it went on to make this assertion
NTU has been consistently ranked within the top 100 universities of the world in the last seven years.
Really? I seem to remember a recent Straits Times article that made the front page, about how NTU slipped to 174 in rankings. I'm pretty sure that wasn't seven years ago.
But of course, to be fair, I actually went on to do some background research on the QS Stars system. And I found out on the webpage itself - http://www.topuniversities.com/qsstars/home that the QS Stars system is not impartial at all!
Here's what the webpage writes
"QS Stars is the innovative new ratings system for academic institututions from QS. QS Stars was designed in response to institution’s needs requesting an evaluation that assesses all their strengths, using more comprehensive indicators in addition to those used in the rankings.
Learn how QS Stars is shaking up the global university ratings system and why universities are signing up to get their QS Stars."
And of course, NUS and SMU aren't in the system because they simply haven't signed up to get themselves accredited. NTU is the only university from Singapore that has been rated, not the first. Well, it is the first, but that's only because it was quick to buy in, not because of merit on its part whatsoever.
So actually, I'm not wrong at all in saying that NTU bought this rating to make themselves look good, and there's more than a little vested interest here in rating NTU well, because NUS and SMU would then scramble to get similar ratings too, resulting in more business for QS Stars.
By the way NTU, you didn't make the top 5 list of universities in Asia on the QS website. But NUS is at 3.