The Necessity of Evaluating the Primary Role of Universities rather than evaluating the Educational Environment and Conditions - Writer: Director of the Department of Public Relations, Cho Joon-Sik Recently, there have been some arguments inside and outside our campus with regard to the results of the University Academic Evaluation of domestic and international media institutions. Prior to discussing issues on the topic, there are two important questions to clarify: What exactly is being evaluated, and what the evaluation process. If these two critical factors are proven to be fair, the results can be greatly relied upon. Currently, there are two major sectors of bodies that execute university evaluations. One would be the media institutions, and the other would be the universities. An example of an evaluation done by a domestic media institution would be Joongang Ilbo's evaluation while international evaluations would be those done by institutions such as The Times (U.K) and Newsweek (U.S.A). An example of an evaluation done by a university would be Shanghai Jiao Tong University's (China). First, if you take a specific look at what they are evaluating, you will find that there is a significant difference between the two groups. Korea's Joongang Ilbo's rating index consists of the following: educational environment and financial status (24%), research done by professors (34%), reputation and ratio of students' entrance into public affairs (22%), globalization (14%), and improvement rate (6%). The Times index was based on the following:associates' evaluation (40%), evaluation done by the head of the human resources department from a number of enterprises (10%) professor-student ratio (20%), dissertation citation rate per professor (20%), foreign professor rate (5%), foreign students (5%). Although a university's global competitiveness is determined by the level of research, education, and community services (influence on the society - includes the social contribution of alumni), the Joongang Ilbo and The Times mostly based their research related to the educational environment such as the ratio between professors and students, number of foreign professors, number of foreign students, reputation, etc, which are quite irrelavant with such index. However, Newsweek (U.S) used a more sophisticated evaluation method than the other two newspapers which utilized only instrumental indexes such as the number of researchers that are frequently cited in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences, the number of essays published in Nature and Science, the number of theses cited in SSCI and A&HCI (50%), the proportion of foreign professors, proportion of foreign students and the student-professor ratio (40%), amount of books in possession (10%), etc. This evaluation method gave more weight to the evaluation in the area of research, which is the fundamental function of a university and hence increasing its credibility. In contrast to the evaluations done by the media institutions, the university evaluation method that is centered on the university's fundamental function, such as is the one done by research and education, Chinese Shanghai Jiao Tong University. This university utilizes indexes such as the number of alumni who are awarded the Nobel Prize and Fields Medal (10%), number of professors who are awarded the Nobel Prize and Fields Medal (20%), highly cited researchers in 21 fields (life sciences, medicine, physics, engineering, and social science) (20%), articles published in Nature and Science (20%), articles indexed in Science Citation Index-expanded, Social Science Citation Index (20%), and research accomplishments which suit the size of the university (10%). Based on these indexes, the university evaluates the top 500 universities in the world. Hence, its evaluation is greatly differentiated from that done by the media institutions. There are many realistic problems in how the selected indexes are evaluated. The media institutions normally rely on interviews which reflect the subjective recognition level of peers and thus lacks in objectivity and fairness. In addition, there is a limit to the amount of direct data that the institutions are able to gather about the universities. Moreover, while evaluation work requires a high level of professionalism and consistency, there are cases in which the institutions consign certain parts of the evaluation work to external service institutions. However, Shanghai Jiao Tong University utilizes data that is officially registered on the association sites of Nobel laureates, Fields Medals, highly cited researchers, articles published in Nature and Science, articles indexed in the Science Citation Index-expanded, Social Science Citation Index, and Arts & Humanities Citation Index each year. Hence, this evaluation is rendered free from criticism on its objectivity and fairness. In summary, the evaluations of media institutions are generally based on a lack of understanding of the university's fundamental functions and roles. Furthermore, they suffer from a technical limitation in professionalism and data collection which cause such evaluations to rely on surveys and peripheral statistics. In particular, interviews take up 50% of the entire evaluation of The Times,which causes it to retain a major limitation in evaluating universities. Regardless of these grave problems, the impact of these assessments is beyond imagination, merely because they are carried out by media institutions. Conversely, while the Shanghai Jiao Tong University evaluation can be highly praised in that it has attempted to assess the fundamental function of universities such as research and education, it is still limited because it has failed to include community services (social impact - including the social contribution of alumni) which is another pivotal function of universities. Thus, supplementing this area in the future will be needed. Although the Shanghai Jiao Tong University evaluation is more advanced than the evaluations of the media institutions because it is based on the fundamental functions of a university, it is not well-known due to the lack of an effective means of publicizing the results of the evaluation. It is incredibly difficult to assess universities with a uniform standard as is done to assess corporations and profit organizations. However, one should never forget that, when evaluating a university, it is the university's achievements such as research, education, and community services, which objectively represent the core of a university's competitiveness, not the educational environment and circumstances. The university evaluations done by media institutions have to be restructured in a way that can help Korean universities in strengthening their global competitiveness. This is possible only in a system which is open to the voices of those in the university. In order to establish a proper university evaluation, we do not necessarily have to insist on following the current evaluations, which do not yet meet the standard level. Of course, we must not be idle in using our time to continuously improve our relatively inferior educational environment and conditions. However, at the same time we must find the ideal method and direction in restructuring our universities and have all members (professors, students, faculty, alumni) thrive to achieve these goals. When this can be achieved, we will find ourselves with enormous power that will catapult Yonsei to become a top level university, a university that the world will acknowledge. For reference, the university evaluation most recently announced by the Shanghai Jiao Tong University (Academic Ranking of World University 2006) ranked universities from 1~100, and rankings below this (101~500) were shown in groups. Harvard was ranked first, Cambridge second, Stanford from England third, U.C. Berkeley fourth, Cal. Tech fifth....Tenth place was Oxford, and in Asia, six Japanese universities were ranked among the top 100; University of Tokyo 19th, Kyoto University 22nd, Osaka University 61st, Tohoku University 76th, Tokyo Engineering University 89th, Nagoya University 98th. Honk Kong, Singapore, China, South Korea, and other Asian countries failed to come within the top 100 schools. In South Korea in particular, only nine universities were ranked within the top 500 and Seoul National University was ranked in the range of 151~200, KAIST and Yonsei University was ranked within 201~300, Korean University, Postech, and Sungkyunkwan University were ranked within 301~400, and Hanyang University, Kyungbook University, Pusan University were ranked within 401~500. Source: http://ed.sjtu.edu.cn Reference: Explanation of the indexes Score on Alumni: Alumni of an institution winning Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals (Equivalent to a Nobel Award in Mathematics) Score on Awards: Staff of an institution winning Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals Score on HiCi: Highly cited researchers in 21 broad subject categories Score on N&S: Articles published in Nature and Science Score on SCI: Articles in Science Citation Index-expanded, Social Science Citation Index Score on Size: Academic performance with respect to the size of an institution