Harman Patil (Editor)

Chinese university ranking (Wu Shulian)

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The Chinese university ranking is a ranking of universities in Mainland China compiled by Wu Shulian, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Management Science (unconfirmed). He has been studying "Chinese University Ranking" since 1991 and leader of "Chinese University Ranking Research Group".

Contents

Introduction

The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Chinese University Alumni Association, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, and many other academic organizations constantly ranks universities in mainland China and in the World in many aspects/fields, including the general ranking, rankings of engineering, natural sciences, medicine, social sciences, law, philosophy, management, etc. This college ranking has met with controversies in China, and counters criticisms that its biased metrics debase many highly respected universities but inflate many second-tier universities.

The leader of this university ranking program is Wu Shulian, who's claimed to be a researcher at the Academy (Guangdong branch). However, his position has not been confirmed by the Chinese Academy of Management Science. There are not much information about the ranking team. Some sources claim that the team leader Wu Shulian was born in Shandong, studied electronic engineering at Tsinghua University and got master's degree of management engineering from Zhejiang University.

The methodology of this ranking is quite similar to the Academic Ranking of World Universities. As any university ranking, this ranking has also continuously suffered with numerous criticisms.

Top 100 universities

The annul ranking has been continuously released in 1996. Top 100 universities out of 2,236 colleges and universities (general/integrated ranking) since 2002 are as below, as well as 1996 ranking.

Notes:

  • The rank once tried category ranking in 1998. To list top 5, comprehensive universities ranking: 1. Nanjing University, 2. Peking University, 3. Fudan University, 4. Shandong University, 5. Jilin University, and technological universities ranking: 1. Tsinghua University, 2. Zhejiang University, 3. Southeast University, 4. Huazhong University of Science and Technology, 5. Xi'an Jiaotong University. However, many schools developed to be comprehensive universities soon later, including through mergers.
  • Since about the year 2000 there were peaks of mergers of universities for several years, and one of the reasons for them is to become comprehensive universities.
  • China University of Petroleum has two branches: One in Beijing and the other one in Qingdao, Shandong Province. The Qingdao branch is ranked among Top 100 (no. 83).
  • China University of Geosciences also has two branches: One in Beijing and the other one in Wuhan, Hubei Province. Both branches are ranked among Top 100 (Wuhan no. 72 and Beijing no. 88).
  • Controversies

    In 2009, the leader of this university ranking program, Mr. Wu Shulian, was reported to have been involved in a fee-for-ranking scandal, involving universities being able to pay money to the ranking program in order to boost their rankings. Consequently, the creditability of his ranking came under criticism.

    The Ministry of Education of the People's Republic of China strongly opposes all university rankings, especially those based on payment of “fees”, a ministry spokeswoman Xu Mei said. The sharp comments came in response to a recent story that Chengdu University of Technology (CDUT) had possibly paid to climb the “China university rankings” table. The university had invited “program director” Wu Shulian to lecture in 2004 and in 2006, a source at the university told the Beijing-based People’s Daily. After Wu had received his 50,000 yuan “remittance”, the school’s ranking rose from 116 in 2004 to 92 in 2007. It fell to 103 in 2009, People's Daily reported.

    A study (referred as the study within this paragraph) by anonymous group from Chinese University of Science and Technology showed that California Institute of Technology would rank out of this Chinese university ranking if calculated by Wu Shulian's ranking standard, which was considered ridiculous. This widespread controversy has greatly affected the credit of this ranking program and has been reported by many medias. Mr. Wu Shuliang officially responded with published paper in Higher Education Development and Evaluation, addressing several important mistakes made by the study. The mistakes include failure to correctly use Mr. Wu Shuliang's ranking method, failure to show the calculation process and thus cannot be repeated, inappropriate publishing classified data by Ministry of Education of the People's Republic of China, inappropriate use of unavailable/non-equivalent indices/scores for California Institute of Technology which constitutes 78.79% of total indices/scores. Mr. Wu Shuliang's paper shows California Institute of Technology clearly ranks much higher than any of Chinese Universities using his published method with proper treatment.

    References

    Chinese university ranking (Wu Shulian) Wikipedia