The University of the Philippines’ rankings in the top world universities has declined but UP officials said these do not reflect the current state of education in the university.

In 2007, UP landed in the bottom spot of Times Higher Education Supplement-Quacquarelli-Symonds (THES-QS) list of top 400 universities. UP ranked 398th, along with National Central University (Taiwan) and Sogang University (South Korea).UP landed on the 372nd and 299th spot of the THES-QS list in 2005 and 2006, respectively.

The THES ranking showed that UP is behind the universities of its neighbors like National University of Singapore (33rd), Malaysia’s Universiti Putra Malaysia (364th), and three Indonesian universities—Universitas Gadjah Mada (360th), Bandung Institute of Technology (369th), and University of Indonesia (395th).

THES, an annual study conducted by the London-based magazine, started in 2004. It used to be a supplement of The Times newspaper of London.

UP officials said that the university did not participate in the rankings but THES still included it. UP President Emerlinda Roman said UP decided not to participate in 2006 because when they talked with THES representatives who visited the Philippines, the latter could not specify the source of the data they used for the survey.

“We wanted to know whether they used data for the entire UP system or from just one campus but they just said that they get data from a certain staff,” Roman told abs-cbnNEWS.com/Newsbreak. She said she wrote THES three times asking them to respect UP’s decision to forego participation in the survey. The 2007 THES-QS ranking, however, still included UP.

The THES-QS ranking uses a set of criteria in ranking the university: peer review (40%), faculty citations (20%), Staff/student ratio (20%), recruiter review (10%), percentage of international students (5%), and percentage of international faculty (5%).

Former UP president Francisco Nemenzo told us that UP did not fare well in the survey because THES-QS put too much weight on some criteria which are low in UP’s prioritty like internationalization of universities, which is measured by the number of expatriate professors and foreign students.

“Over the past years, UP has pursued a faculty development program that would make it less dependent on visiting professors from overseas,” Nemenzo said. “We are proud that most of our professors today are Filipinos who earned their Ph.D.s from UP or from universities abroad, unlike in the 1950s when UP became a dumping ground of mediocre professors from the United States.” Roman, meanwhile, said that although UP received requests from universities abroad to accept foreign students applying in the university’s nursing and medicine programs, the university cannot accommodate them because it would rather accommodate Filipino students. The university, Roman added, cannot attract foreign faculty because of its low salaries.

The defunct Asiaweek magazine, meanwhile, ranked UP 48th among 77 universities in its 2000 university rankings.

The survey used five criteria in ranking universities: academic reputation (20%), student selectivity (25%), faculty resources (25%), research (20%), and financial resources (10%).

Nemenzo, who was the university’s top official when the Asiaweek survey came out, said the magazine put too much emphasis on material and financial resources.

In a column in UP Forum published last year, former College of Education dean Leticia Penano-Ho said UP did not do well in the financial resources because it has little control of its budget since this is allocated by the national government.

Ho added that UP got a low score in the faculty resources criterion because it includes median pay and per-teacher university spending. Ho said if the university wants to be competitive with local and regional universities it should upgrade the faculty profile but this requires a better compensation package. “The minimum entry requirement for the faculty should be a doctoral degree.”

Ho said that UP can participate in these rankings but “never should the UP be dependent on these external rankings in defining what it stands for.”—Jesus Llanto (abs-cbnNEWS.com/Newsbreak)

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