Kazhes pierakstu burtnīca

According to a research published in Latvijas avīze the best school for higher education in Latvia is the University of Latvia. Since it is the university where I got my degree, theoretically I should be proud. But a closer look at the results table (table copied from the page of LA as I know that it will be removed from the public viewing section pretty soon).

What do these results show? Basically the ranking is made up from a sum of 10 components which should show how professional the educational facility is in different aspects. Yet some of these attributes are strange, to say the least. For instance, "the number of students per 1 member of the academic staff". That`s a good one, I know. But why does the table indicate that it is better to have less lecturers and more students? If the University of Latvia has 88 students per 1 lecturer and the Riga School of Economics has 3, why does the University of Latvia get 88 points in comparison to 3 given to the school of economics (the table clearly indicates that more points means - better)? Isn`t it total nonsense?
Another parameter - the percentage of graduates from the total amount of students. If a school would have 100% graduates would it show that it is a high-quality educational facility or simply that it has very low standards? In some situations this percentage can indeed show that the students don`t lose their trust in studies and are keen to graduate, while in others it doesn`t mean a thing.

Another criterion - the percentage of lecturers in the age between 30 and 50 years. Ok, I admit that in this age a lecturer is the most likely to be good. But - is it really true that it is best if ALL your lecturers are in this age group? And that a 25 year old lecturer (or a 75 year old one) is always just a dead weight? Science isn`t sports where you can`t compete when being too old. This can theoretically be compensated with another criterion - the amount of scientific publications per a lecturer - an experienced lecturer should have more publications and thus earn more points for his school. But publications vary. Say, you have a "Business school for Dummies" which publishes a weekly newspaper (which is considered more or less scientific) in which all its lecturers publish their not too brilliant thoughts, thus an employee of this school can have for example 20 publications a year thus totally out-gunning a real scientist whom it takes 2 years to publish something earth-shattering.

And such points can be made for every single one of these criteria, so I wouldn`t hold this classification too highly.