The University of Hong Kong, Chinese University (CUHK) and the University of Science and Technology (HKUST) have been ranked as the city's top three universities, according to a latest survey.

Media Education Info-tech Co Ltd, a local NGO, which had conducted 12 similar surveys, released four separate university rankings on Monday.

The rankings were based on objective criteria, public polling or polling among middle school headmasters. All returned similar results, with the three universities appearing on the top.

Despite minor changes, the full ranking of the city's top ten universities has not changed much over the past decade.

Among the four rankings was one based on several criteria including admission grades (35 percent), amount of secured research funds and successful fund application rate (30 percent), research output (14 percent), lecturer to student ratio (14 percent) and library collections (7 percent).

In another ranking based on so-called objective criteria, the university was appraised according to the performance of its graduates.

"The rankings remained pretty stable. That is because there are only 10 universities in Hong Kong, whereas in international rankings which involve hundreds of universities, the ranking may show greater changes over the years," said Robert Chung Ting-yiu, director of the Public Opinion Programme of the University of Hong Kong which was commissioned to conduct the public poll.

Wong Chi-sum, a member of the University Grant Commission (UGC) Concern Group and a CUHK professor, voiced skepticism about the criteria.

"If we are looking at the amount of secured research funds, medical schools of the HKU and the CUHK surely need tons of resources that may cost more than HK$10 million, while a big research project of the liberal arts disciplines might need just a few hundred thousand," Wong said.

He added that in order to get a higher percentage of research fund application, some universities have been "filtering" research projects applications before sending them to the UGC, a government-backed institution which allocates a large part of research funds to the universities based on competition.

"It is unfair to compare a teaching-oriented university with a research-oriented university, which is equal to comparing an orange and an apple," Wong said.

According to the survey, the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, City University of Hong Kong and the Hong Kong Institute of Education possess higher lecturer to student ratios.

"It is also problematic to evaluate the teaching quality just by looking at the lecturer-student ratio, because different disciplines have different requirements. For example, a medical school requires the ratio be at least 1:4, while for liberal arts discipline, the ratio can be 1:20 or even 1:30," Wong said, and added that Lingnan University - which offers mainly liberal arts disciplines - might find the ranking criteria unfair.

Lingnan University, which ranked ninth this year, declined to comment on the ranking criteria.

However, the Facebook page of Lingnan University cited a 6,000-word article in 2009 which criticized the ranking done by this particular organization as "not objective, not scientific, extremely rash, labeling weak universities and misleading the public".

andrea@chinadailyhk.com

China Daily

(HK Edition 07/26/2011 page1)