Back

Note: This article represents the view of the author and not the University of Hong Kong.

This is one article which the author is a bit reluctant to write. Both our country and society are now at a difficult time, why should we intellectuals still care so much about university rankings, if not because it has become a tool for competing for honour and prestige?

The author has had this feeling for long, but it was especially strong last year. This is because when "Ranking of Universities in Hong Kong in 2003" was released by "Education18.com" one year ago, some of the statistics were quoted from a survey conducted by the author, namely, "Opinion Survey on the Public Ranking of Universities in Hong Kong 2003". Soon, one vice-president of a local university submitted three articles to Ming Pao and Hong Kong Economic Journal in one short week, and criticized, almost libelously, the exercise as a "amateurish", "trifling", "extremely wrong" and "garbage-in, garbage-out" study. For the part which Public Opinion Programme (POP) has participated in, he considered it as "having committed fundamental mistakes on statistics and surveys", "of extremely low standard" and "can be ignored".

At that time, Hong Kong was under the plague of SARS, June 4 and July 1 was also approaching. The society was having a difficult time. The author thought it was unnecessary to get engaged into sensational arguments. As a matter of fact, the report concerned has already been publicized in the POP Site, therefore, the author just decided to take those criticisms easy.

Today I am writing this article because I want to tell the readers, "Education18.com" has again released their new "Ranking of Universities in Hong Kong". Same as the past years, some of the statistics were also quoted from a public opinion survey conducted by the author. The method is the same, the report has also been released in POP Site. If "Education18.com" continues to commission us to conduct the independent public opinion survey, we will not step back. However, if no one commissions us, we will not use our own money to conduct such surveys. What concerns the author more, is the temperament and sense of responsibility of individual intellectuals, rather than the ranking of the universities. The author always believes that those working in tertiary institutions may not necessarily be intellectuals, while many intellectuals are actually not working in tertiary institutions.

However, since there is a professional agency which needs to understand the public impression on different tertiary institutions, we definitely need to do our best. Over the years, we have emphasized the following in our research reports:

1. The whole "Report on Public Opinion on the Public Ranking of Universities in Hong Kong" has been released on the internet, whereas "Ranking of Universities in Hong Kong" is a professional recommendation, responsible by "Education18.com".

2. The part that we have participated in can only reflect the general public's perceptions towards different local tertiary institutions. It is neither an objective appraisal nor a professional recommendation.

3. The survey mainly adopts the method of absolute rating according to individual attributes, rather than relative ranking, which is more conducive to profile analysis of the relative strengths and weaknesses of individual institutions. Readers should, therefore, not over-emphasize the relative rankings of different institutions.

4. POP is under the University of Hong Kong, which is one of institutions being rated by respondents. In order to ensure that the interviewee will not be affected, our interviewer has already emphasized in the introduction that POP is a neutral research body, and requested the interviewees not to distort their original intent because of the relationship between POP and the University of Hong Kong. We emphasized that the interviewees must answer honestly, otherwise the research result will lose its value.

5. To eliminate any possible bias arising from the questioning order, the prompting order among the eight institutions in each question was randomly rotated in all rating questions.

6. We believe that the survey has been conducted fairly, objectively, and scientifically. Since the research instrument and survey findings are fully open for public scrutiny, we welcome any agency to validate our findings using similar methods.

However, in this economy-driven society where resources cut and lay-off are common, everyone has his/her own ideas. Our tertiary education has degenerated into an arena of war - between the strong and the weak, the appraiser and the appraisee, and among those craving for glory and money. The conflicts between the two universities, the dying associate degree programmes, the "cut-throat sales" of academic researches, and damn curses on unfavourable indicators… all these have brought the author to wordless grief.

"Taxi drivers and cashiers in McDonalds know nothing about laws, therefore, consultations are unnecessary," someone said some time ago. These words have become well-known in the community. To put them in a wider context, the general public knows nothing about the operation of institutions, thus, public opinion surveys, of course, will be like "asking the blind" and "can be ignored". This kind of self-centered person definitely will not agree on universal suffrage, and will also not respect public opinion surveys. Last year, that vice-president was using this perspective to condemn our survey. However, quite ridiculously, that vice-president highly recommended some surveys conducted among students which favoured his university, but without published reports.

To be fair, all public opinion surveys have their own limits. Public opinion surveys are not professional appraisals, they can only reflect part of the truth. To be specific, public opinion surveys on the ranking of tertiary institutions can at best reflect the public corporate images of different institutions. As far as the author knows, many institutions have also conducted similar researches, only that their results were not released.

Rating and ranking of tertiary institutions conducted by the media and educational websites are common everywhere. This is inevitable in an open society. The credibility of such ranking depends on the research methods adopted by the agency, research history as well as their pragmatic values. They are beyond the author's scope of responsibilities. However, the author always respects professional assessments, including academic assessments, artistic assessments and publication assessments, and so on. The author also hopes that a set of widely recognized standards can be reached among institutions so as to assess different programmes, faculties as well as institutions. This set of standards should neither be based merely on economic considerations, nor be enforced top-down. Instead, it should be based on education ideals, and takes into consideration the unique features of different universities. Ideally, it should stem from an agreement reached among different universities. Many reputable university rankings around the world only include universities which participated on a voluntary basis, with assessments conducted by independent research agencies.

According to the observations of the author, the development of a reputable university ranking system is only in a preliminary stage in Hong Kong and Mainland China. There are neither widely accepted professional ranking, nor assessment mechanisms based on voluntary participation or mutual agreement. It can be expected that many different indicators will continue to come up, such as admission results, starting salary of graduates, number of outstanding secondary six students admitted, ratio of overseas staff or students, international ranking of faculties or schools, public image, and even the fund-raising ability of institutions. While "knowledge-based economy" is constantly emphasized in our mundane society, the related debate will continue endlessly. The author really does not want to spend time on the endless debates. It will be much more constructive if different tertiary institutions can co-operate and set a commonly-used standard. If this is impossible, each institution can establish its own set of indicators for its whole institution or individual departments, so that it can demonstrate to the public their performance once every year.

Although the author does not have a really wide social network, he knows quite a number of teachers, staff members and students in different universities. The author will never judge a person according to one's university affiliation, but only appreciate and respect those intellectuals who have visions, willing to take up responsibilities, and stand fast on their own posts. Why can't all the institutions, including those not covered in the survey, utilize their own strength to teach unselfishly whatever students they have, and carve some unique and beautiful pictures of their own?