BBC – Sean Coughlan
“Higher education has a strong sense of hierarchy. And high-profile international league tables are a very public form of this pecking order. While these might measure a whole range of factors – from reputation and staff ratios to research output – what they do not compare is the ability of students who have been taught in these universities. But the OECD has now published test results comparing the ability of graduates in different countries. And it shows a very different map of higher education than the ranking tables, which are dominated by US and UK universities, such as Harvard, MIT, Stanford, Oxford, Cambridge and UCL.”(more)