EDUCATIONAL MEASUREMENT IN ITALIAN UNIVERSITIES and THE UNIVERSITY RATING EVOLUTION by Raimondo Manca

SOME HISTORY In the second half of the 19° century Italy was unified –There was a high rate of illitteralicy –Big differences between the north and south Two big intuitions at the end of the century –Montessori’s method The teacher should adequate to the scholars –Creation of universities devoted to the preparation of teachers for primary school Italian primary school was very good and the Montessori method was adopted in many countries

CRISIS OF ITALIAN SCHOOL Strong increase of university students in seventies Many people became University professors without the quality The school teachers were paid less Teaching was considered a second best More and more students that are not well prepared arrive at university A vicious circle was created

ACTUAL SITUATION The Faculties that prepared primary school teachers were cancelled and were transformed in something more general (Educational Sciences) There are 36 faculties of Educational Sciences –16 statistics or psicometry professors (associate or full) –9 assistant professors Educational measurement is not yet well established in Italy

COUNTRIES OF FIRST 100 UNIVERSITIES CriteriaIndicatorCodeWeight Quality of EducationAlumni of an institution winning Nobel Prizes and Fields MedalsAlumni10% Quality of Faculty Staff of an institution winning Nobel Prizes and Fields MedalsAward20% Highly cited researchers in 21 broad subject categoriesHiCi20% Research Output Papers published in Nature and Science*N&S20% Papers indexed in Science Citation Index-expanded and Social Science Citation IndexPUB20% Per Capita PerformancePer capita academic performance of an institutionPCP10% Total100%

FIRST 20 WORLD UNIVERSITY World RankInstitution*RegionRegional RankNational Rank 1Harvard UniversityAmericas11 2University of California, BerkeleyAmericas22 3Stanford UniversityAmericas33 4Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)Americas44 5University of CambridgeEurope11 6California Institute of TechnologyAmericas55 7Princeton UniversityAmericas66 8Columbia UniversityAmericas77 9University of ChicagoAmericas88 10University of OxfordEurope22 11Yale UniversityAmericas99 12Cornell UniversityAmericas10 13University of California, Los AngelesAmericas11 14University of California, San DiegoAmericas12 15University of PennsylvaniaAmericas13 16University of WashingtonAmericas14 17University of Wisconsin - MadisonAmericas15 18The Johns Hopkins UniversityAmericas16 18University of California, San FranciscoAmericas The University of TokyoAsia/Pacific11

UNIVERSITY RATING TIME EVOLUTION I Hypotheses –Homogeneity –Semi-Markov process –Discrete time (DTHSMP) Steps –State subdivision –Embedded Markov Chain –Waiting time distribution function –Model application –Results

STATE SUBDIVISION State set: –State –State –State –State –State –State –State –State –State –State 10 No Rating

INPUT CONSTRUCTION Embedded Markov Chain construction – Number of transitions from the state i to the state j – Number of transition from the state i – Probability to go from state i to state j Waiting time distribution function – number of transition from i to j within a time t – probability to have a transition in a time ≤ t

HSMP 1

HSMP 2

CONCLUSIONS Universities Private universities Countries Data collection for the first 6000 world universities Construction of input data