PhD recipients from US universities

NSF has a handy 24-page report [pdf] tons of interesting info on PhD recipients from US universities; published in March 2018, the report summarizes data going upt to the year 2016. [This page has a huge list of reports and data tables from NSF on S&E doctorate awards]

Fun facts: During 2006-16, US universities accounted for nearly 50,000 Chinese PhD graduates; followed by Indian (~25,000)and South Korean (~15,000) graduates. Together, these three countries account for over 50% of the PhD degrees awarded to non-US citizens.

The Road to the Top 100

Anubhuti Vishnoi in The Economic Times: Centre to fund 10 institutes for next 3-4 years to help them find a place among top 100 on global academic rankings:

The Centre will soon pick 10 higher education institutes with potential and provide them with substantial funding over the next four years so that Indian institutes can finally storm into the top 100 on global academic rankings like QS and Times ... These 10 institutes, it is proposed, will be granted funds — ranging fromRs 100-500 crore for the next 3-4 years so that they can create world class research infrastructure and laboratories. The end target is getting Indian institutes among global top 100.

ISI, Nalanda, FTII, etc., etc.

1. R. Ramachandran has an update on the Bimal Roy affair at the Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata -- A twist in the ISI tale.

2. Arunabha Bagchi has an op-ed in The Stateman -- Autonomy of Learning -- in which he lists all the known cases of government interference in academic institutions and bodies such as ICHR. It's a very long list indeed.

3. Bagchi, of course, starts with the now famous critique of the present government by Amartya Sen (published in no less an outlet than NYRB): The stormy revival of an international university.

Here's an excerpt from the first article.

After humiliating the former Director of an institution of national importance and vitiating the atmosphere, the government does an about-turn and tries to save face by appointing him head of a cryptology centre. [...]

The current events at the ISI have resulted in a legal notice being served on the Chairman and the institute by two ISI faculty members (who were at the council meeting on April 23), two petitions being filed in the Calcutta High Court against the government (one by three academics, including two ISI faculty members, one of whom is also a council member, and a member of the ISI society who is a professor at Calcutta University, and the second by Bimal Roy himself), an online petition (www.change.org) being signed by over 2,000 people, and an open letter to the President of India from the International Association for Cryptologic Research (IACR).

But the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI) does not seem inclined to resolve the issue in a fair, just and democratic way. Significantly, the Ministry, having made all the allegations against Roy, has not served any show-cause notice or a charge sheet, let alone institute, as demanded by the online petition, a “proper public investigation into the allegations… and a proper hearing by the council”.

Janet Napolitano: Higher Education [in the US] isn't in Crisis

In her WaPo review of a couple of books on US higher education, the president of the University of California system starts with a big splash:

Imagine, if you will, an American business that other countries, from China to Saudi Arabia, seek to emulate. A business that routinely accounts for the advances in science, medicine, technology, arts and humanities that have established the United States as the most innovative nation in the world. A business whose customers number about 20 million in this country alone, spanning the spectrum of socioeconomic backgrounds. A business that conservatively contributes more than $400 billion annually to the U.S. economy. A business that is commonly recognized as one of America’s greatest contributions to civilization.

That enterprise is America’s system of higher education. [...]

Visa Hardball

At the lunch table the other day, the Visa Venkateswara   posts came up for discussion, and it occurred to us that, given her name, Goddess Visalakshi should be able to beat every Hindu deity hollow in this very popular and lucrative game. She is certainly losing out!

The materials-engineer-turned-journalist Sidin Vadukut has a funny post (funny only if you have not been hit by a stray ball in the game of visa hardball) -- Borderline Personality: Put Your Game Face On, Passport Control -- on India's e-visa scheme. Its funny-ness comes from his advocacy of strict reciprocity in dealing with travelers from different countries. For example:

USA: When visitors arrive at an Indian airport, immediately ask them to furnish the passport officer with passport photos that are no more than one hour old. Provide photo booths in the airport where visitors can take pictures at a nominal fee of ₹15,000 per photograph. When they have submitted seven copies of the photograph, allow them into the country after confiscating their footwear.

In any case, the reciprocity-in-the-visa-game is turning into a source of pain for Indians traveling to the US, and vice versa. While this has been happening on and off for quite sometime (1, 2, 3, 4, and 5, with the earliest occurrence in this blog being from way back in February of 2006), the flare-ups make it to the press when the affected parties occupy positions far higher that that of a grad student or a professor. The latest celebrity to be denied a US visa is the Director General of CSIR!

Here's the The Economic Times report -- Indo-US ties: Denial of visas to scientists thorn in the flesh -- by Pallava Bagla who points out that India has been quite good at dishing out pain to the American academics who want to travel to India. The following excerpt is about the troubles of Dr. M.O. Garg, DG-CSIR:

This week, India's leading petroleum researcher Dr M O Garg, Director General of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), New Delhi went livid on what he called was a 'denial of granting a US visa' for him to attend a scientific meeting in Columbus, Ohio. Garg heads India's largest network of 38 civilian labs employing over 4000 scientists with an annually budget of about Rs 3800 crore.

On June 1, Garg recounts that he spent almost half a day filling out screen after screen of questions to apply for his US visa which he calls was like writing down 'my janam-patri or life history', a day later in usual fashion he was finger printed and photographed. On June 3, he was asked to appear for the 'visa interview' which he did at 8.30 am and he recalls that 'questions for which the consular official already had answers' were popped to him which he says he patiently answered.

Then it seems his troubles began when he was asked to appear for another face-to-face interview at new window where he was now given a piece of paper with several questions and a 'tracking number'. Garg says having procured several US visas in the past this now meant to him that he was being 'singled out'.

Links

1. Susannah Locke in Vox.com: 15 ways to tell if that science news story is hogwash

   The excellent chart ... offers "A Rough Guide to Spotting Bad Science." It was put together by the blogger [Andy Brunning, a chemistry teacher in the UK] behind the chemistry site Compound Interest. It isn't meant to be an exhaustive list — and not all of these flaws are necessarily fatal.

2. A bold initiative in France: Ambition in Paris:

   The creation of the University of Paris-Saclay’s campus will cost €2 billion ($2.17 billion), and a government-funded €2.5 billion ($2.72 billion) extension of the Paris Métro will connect the high-tech hub to the center of the French capital in 35 minutes.

   However, Dominique Vernay, president of Paris-Saclay, has bigger concerns than the infrastructure challenges involved in constructing the university’s 1,300-acre campus over the next few years, namely how to get 19 fiercely independent organizations to pull together and move in the same direction. [...]

   “They were not that keen to work together in the beginning, but they have taken steps over the past seven years to come together -- the commitment was to set up a common organization.”

   To this end, nine of France’s most prestigious grandes écoles, such as the École Polytechnique and the École Normale Supérieure, will work with less selective traditional universities, business schools and national research organizations at Paris-Saclay.

   Within 10 years, 12,000 researchers and 70,000 students will be based at the Paris-Saclay campus, with the institution aiming to take its place among the world’s top 10 universities by 2025.

3. Charles Seife in Slate: Science’s Big Scandal. "Even legitimate publishers are faking peer review."

   It can be read alone, but it's even better to read it with Seife's previous article in Scientific American: For Sale: “Your Name Here” in a Prestigious Science Journal. "An investigation into some scientific papers finds worrying irregularities."

4. Barbara Fister in Inside Higher Ed: New Predatory Publishing in Old Bottles. "... What worries me far more than these fairly obvious scams are the emerging business practices being used by highly profitable publishers with long and distinguished pedigrees that are treating open access as a new revenue stream that can be both open and closed – earning money through subscriptions and author fees. [...]"

Links

1. A great infographic on migration patterns of international students.

2. Duncan Watts at BuzzFeed Books: Should you go to grad school? "It’s expensive, time consuming, and risky ... so is it right for you?"

   ... Certainly it was a great experience for me, but it’s not for everyone. Grad students are by nature competitive, analytical types who are already predisposed to overthinking everything, so the intensity and uncertainty of grad school make it a breeding ground for insecurity and anxiety. It’s definitely not something you should subject yourself to because you can’t think of anything else to do, nor should you suffer through it on the grounds that you’ll be happier with the academic career that it leads to. There are plenty of miserable academics out there as well, and lots of great and interesting things to do with your life that don’t require a Ph.D., not to mention the five to seven years that most people spend getting one. Don’t sign up for it lightly.

The Not Entirely Unintended Consequences of the Erasmus Program

Ah, the possibilities of student exchange [This is six months late, but I'm struck by the timelessness of this "news"]:

A study published by the European Commission this week suggests that more than a quarter of those who take part in its long-running Erasmus scheme meet their long-term partner while studying abroad – and that more than one million babies may have been produced as a result. [...]

European Commission spokeswoman Pia Ahrenkilde Hansen said the one million babies statistic was a “touching little figure” that proved the scheme “creates a lot of positive things”. “It is a great encouragement to young people to go and live abroad and open up to all the opportunities that exist if you are willing,” she added.

And, oh, the report has a lot more about how great the Erasmus program has been.

Links

1. Pushpa Bhargava in The Hindu: Scientists without a Scientific Temper.

2. Jeffrey Mervis in Science Insider: Data check: Why do Chinese and Indian students come to US universities?. See also Elizabeth Redden at Inside Higher Ed: International Enrollment Up.

3. Rachel Bernstein in Science Insider: Belief that some fields require 'brilliance' may keep women out.

4. The US Office of Research Integrity presents The Research Clinic, an "interactive training video [that] educates clinical and social researchers on the importance of appropriately protecting research subjects and avoiding research misconduct."

University Assessments in the US and the UK

This month saw two significant events in higher ed elsewhere.

The first was in the US, where the Department of Education released a "draft framework" outlining a set of parameters which can form the basis for rating colleges and universities. The report is open for public discussion and debate, before the rating policy is finalized. See the NYTimes story on the report, and Kevin Carey's commentary on it. The ratings are meant to help aspiring undergraduate students in choosing the right colleges to apply to.

The second was the much awaited announcement of the results of an extensive assessment exercise called REF (Research Excellence Framework). As the name suggests, this exercise is only about the research conducted at the UK universities, and its results have a strong impact on universities as well as on individual departments. See The Guardian story: REF 2014: why is it such a big deal?.

The Guardian's coverage is a good place to start, but you can get all the data at the REF site.

See also: Five reasons why the REF is not fit for purpose‬‬‬.

Ranking Tail and Institutional Dogs

Ranking of universities in the US has thrown up several cases of fraudulent reporting by places like George Washington and Claremont McKenna. Others have taken a more strategic route by re-prioritizing their spending to target higher scores in the metrics that matter. I just linked to a Boston Magazine story on Northeastern's efforts to align its priorities with those of US News.

We now have a BBC story about the French government taking this strategic route, which will cost "only" 7.5 billion euros:

As part of a huge government-driven academic and economic project, there will be a new university called Paris-Saclay, with a campus south of the French capital. The project has initial funding of 7.5bn euros (£5.9bn) for an endowment, buildings and transport links.

The French government is bringing together 19 institutions into a single structure, with the aim of building a university of a size and scale that can compete with global giants like Harvard or the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Dominique Vernay, the president of this new university, says that within a decade he wants Paris-Saclay to be among the top ranking world universities.

"My goal is to be a top 10 institution," he says. In Europe, he wants Paris-Saclay to be in the "top two or three".

* * *

Sometime ago, we also saw a study that looked at how much it would cost Rochester -- "consistently ranked in the mid-thirties" -- to break into the top 20 in the US News list. It arrived at a figure of 112 million dollars to take care of just two of the metrics -- faculty salary and resources provided to students.

Jack Grove: Germany's Import-Export Model

An interesting article on how Germany views Study Abroad aspects of college education:

Sending half of Germany’s university students abroad for part of their studies by 2020 will give the country a major competitive advantage over other export-driven nations, a leading figure in German higher education asserts.

Sebastian Fohrbeck, director of internationalization and communication at the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), which promotes German higher education abroad, dismissed fears that its plans for “a massive movement of students abroad” represented an “organized brain drain.”.

About a third of German students now undertake some of their degree study in another country, but government ministers are keen to increase this to 50 percent within six years, Fohrbeck told a conference in London, which was jointly organized by the UK HE International Unit, the Institut Français and the DAAD.

Links

1. Samanth Subramanian in The New Yorker: India's Frugal Mission to Mars (November 2013) and Why India Went to Mars (25 September 2014).

2. Eldho Mathews in Inside Higher Ed: Internationalization: Where Is India Headed?

3. UGC tags 8 deemed universities 'unworthy', Basant Kumar Mohanty reports in The Telegraph.

4. India's Town of Toppers, Rakesh Kumar reports in Gulf News - Weekend Review.

The Right Response To Ranking Exercises: We are X, And We Should Be The Best X We Can Be

Prof. Peter N. Stearns, the soon-to-be-ex Provost of George Mason University, has what I think is one of the best responses to the ranking exercises that seem to have a nasty effect on the sleep cycles of many university leaders. In his recent post entitled Mason Goals, this is what he has to say (and I hope he won't mind the extended excerpt), and with bold emphasis added by me:

T... [W]here should we be heading? I don’t mean the details of the new strategic plan, which is ambitious and fine, though my comments relate to the overall directions of the plan. I refer more to University identity.

And here we confront a puzzle: George Mason is really hard to categorize. When I first arrived I assumed my job was to help make the University even more recognized in the standard ways – move up in US News rankings, get mentioned more often as a research hub, become more selective, and so on. And we did do some of these things. But we also wanted to keep identities we already had, that were equally valuable: center of student diversity (US News shamefully ignores this in its main ratings); accessible to large numbers of first-generation students – and not just accessible – serving as a means for their academic success; eager to seize new opportunities and innovate where appropriate, without as much traditionalist resistance as is common in many other places.

We wanted, in other words, to be George Mason. I heard talk of earlier goals of becoming the “Harvard of the Potomac”, but this reference has faded partly because we simply lack the means, and partly because that’s not fully what we want to be anyway. Yet at the same time we’re not simply innovative and accessible. We really do want to move meaningful research forward. We really do want to combine opportunity with serious quality standards — otherwise we might have more degrees to brag about, but without the real service to students a good university must pledge. We want to be a distinctive mixture, and that’s what I hope we’ve been accomplishing and will accomplish in the future. We want to maintain an active, creative tension between serious conventional standards and the distinctive flavor we’ve developed as an up-and-comer.

Several years ago, pressed by a Board of Visitors interested in Mason aiming at “world class” standards, we hired a consultant who actually said it most clearly: strive to be the best George Mason we can be. Take pride in the difficulty people have in pinpointing us too easily. Take pride in the combinations. In the process we’ll find, as we already do with some of our international visitors, that other institutions will be seeking to adopt our formula.

The "Price" for Getting into the Top 20

A sobering way of examining university ranking exercises is to put a price on the goal of getting into the Top-20 (or Top whatever) in a certain list. Here's an Inside Higher Ed news story about a recent paper that looked into the price for the University of Rochester, which is "ranked consistently in the mid-thirties" in the US News list, to break into the Top 20 (the paper itself is available at a price that I am not willing to pay ;-):

If it wanted to move into the top 20, Rochester would have to do a lot on several of the various factors U.S. News uses to rank colleges. To move up one spot because of faculty compensation, Rochester would have to increase the average faculty salary by about $10,000. To move up one spot on resources provided to students, it would have to spend $12,000 more per student. Those two things alone would cost $112 million a year.

To get into the top 20, Rochester would also have to increase its graduation rate by 2 percent, enroll more students who were in the top 10 percent of their high school graduating class, get more alumni to give, cut the acceptance rate and increase the SAT and ACT scores of incoming students. Some of those things, like offering aid money to highly qualified students, might further increase the expense.

But that’s not all, the paper argues. Rochester would still have to do well in the rankings magazine’s “beauty contest.”

Because 15 percent of the ranking is based on reputation among other administrators, even massive expenditures year after year and huge leaps in student quality and graduation would not be enough. The reputation score as judged by its peers would need to increase from 3.4 to 4.2 on a scale of 5, something that has only a .01 percent chance of happening, the paper said.

Links: Global Ranking of Universities

1. D.D. Guttenplan in NYTimes: Re-evaluating the college ranking game.

   So who will rank the rankings?

   That was the inescapable question when representatives of the four leading ranking organizations sat on the same panel at a conference here last month.

   As Bob Morse, the research director for U.S. News and World Report, pointed out, rankings have become a fiercely competitive global business.

   So the presence of Mr. Morse; Phil Baty, editor of the Times Higher Education Rankings; Nian Cai Lui, originator of the Academic Ranking of World Universities (better known as the Shanghai rankings); and Ben Sowter of the QS World University Rankings would have been enough to make the gathering “a historic event,” Mr. Morse said.

   But in addition to trading friendly digs at their competitors’ methodologies, the rankers had to listen to some stinging criticism — not just from disgruntled academics complaining that their institutions have been undervalued, or education ministers responding to an absence of their country’s universities on a given list, but from their own invited guests. Even the conference host, Michael Arthur, the president of University College London, took a jab.

2. Aisha Labi in NYTimes: E.U. Seeking Better Clarity on Rankings:

   A new international effort to gauge the performance of universities went online last month promising to be a nuanced tool for students and institutions in the contentious field of global rankings.

   The project is U-Multirank, which was announced in 2011, backed by the European Union and aims to foster greater transparency about higher education globally, including in the United States. But while its approach has received praise, some experts say it still has a way to go before achieving its goals, and some higher education groups have already raised questions about its methods.

US Grad School Applications from India Jump 32%

A surprising finding reported by CHE [based on results of a survey (pdf) by the Council of Grad Schools]. The reasons for this year's uptick are difficult to pin down, but the CHE report points to harsh visa policies by the UK as a possibility:

... Indian numbers have been erratic. One year, first-time graduate enrollments climbed more than 30 percent, only to plummet 16 percent a couple of years later.

That seeming fickleness reflects the fact that education decisions in India tend to be highly susceptible to economic shifts, including fluctuating currency exchange rates and employment prospects, both at home and abroad. A significant share of Indian graduate students enroll in master’s- and professional-degree programs and thus often have to cover much of the tuition costs themselves.

The current application growth, however, comes as the Indian rupee has generally fallen in value against the dollar, suggesting that other factors may be in play. Ms. Stewart, of the council, cited tightening student-visa rules in Britain. A recent report found that the number of first-time students at English universities from India and Pakistan had halved since 2010, and some of those students, Ms. Stewart suggested, could have opted to apply to institutions in the United States instead.

"It’s very difficult to trace cause and effect," she said, "but it seems that we’re at least the short-term beneficiaries."

Any guesses for the second consecutive year of robust growth from India?

Links

1. Infographic: Number of Researchers per million inhabitants by Country.

2. Philip Guo: Silent Technical Privilege. "As a novice computer programmer, I always got the benefit of the doubt—because I looked the part."

   Instead of facing implicit bias or stereotype threat, I had the privilege of implicit endorsement. For instance, whenever I attended technical meetings, people would assume that I knew what I was doing (regardless of whether I did or not) and treat me accordingly. If I stared at someone in silence and nodded as they were talking, they would assume that I understood, not that I was clueless. Nobody ever talked down to me, and I always got the benefit of the doubt in technical settings.

   As a result, I was able to fake it till I made it, often landing jobs whose postings required skills I hadn't yet learned but knew that I could pick up on the spot. Most of my interviews for research assistantships and summer internships were quite casual—people just gave me the chance to try. And after enough rounds of practice, I actually did start knowing what I was doing. As I gained experience, I was able to land more meaningful programming jobs, which led to a virtuous cycle of further improvement.

3. Retraction Watch: Oh, the irony: Paper on “Ethics and Integrity of the Publishing Process” retracted for duplication.

Annals of Gaming: Does Size Matter?

Bloomberg's Oliver Staley has an excellent story focusing on a particular method to get ahead in global university league tables: merging universities, with examples from France and Finland. This discussion has some relevance to India since there have been suggestions that all the IITs put together might get the 'IIT System' to break into the top 100 in the rank lists.

Nations Chasing Harvard Merge Colleges to Ascend Rankings:

Twenty colleges and research institutes are combining to create Universite Paris-Saclay, soon to be one of France’s largest universities, at a cost of about 6.5 billion euros ($9 billion). It’s France’s bid to crack the top of rankings that increasingly dominate international higher education.

“Our ambition is to be among the top 10” in the rankings compiled by Shanghai Jiao Tong University, said Dominique Vernay, chairman of the foundation creating Paris-Saclay. “The first goal is to be the top university in continental Europe.”

Countries from Finland to Portugal are shaping their higher education policies based on outside rankings, eager for the validation and attention the annual lists bestow, even while they are criticized as flawed or misleading. Because bigger is perceived as better in these lists, governments are merging campuses in hopes of attracting research money and higher caliber faculty and students.

The high-stakes pursuit of bragging rights is distorting universities’ missions, favoring research over teaching and science over the humanities, said Ellen Hazelkorn, director of the Higher Education Policy Research Unit at the Dublin Institute of Technology.

Construction cranes stand on Electricite de France SA's (EDF) new research and... Read More “It’s all about national prestige,” said Hazelkorn, who has written widely about rankings. “Rankings are less about students and more about geopolitics.”

American Universities, Chinese Students

... In 2007, the U.S. State Department issued roughly 40,000 F-1 student visas to residents of mainland China. (Visa numbers may not correspond exactly with enrollments, but can be a useful measure.) By comparison, 46,000 visas were issued to students from South Korea that year, 34,000 to India, 22,000 to Japan, and 15,000 to Taiwan.

Five years later, visas for South Korean, Indian, Japanese, and Taiwanese students had all declined. Chinese students visas, meanwhile, quadrupled, to 189,000 in 2012, more than the total number issued to students from North America, South America, Europe, Africa, and Oceania combined. [Bold emphasis added]

More on these astonishing numbers, and the drivers behind them, in Kevin Carey's piece in The Chronicle of Higher Education.