Simulation Tool to Game the Rankings

A professor in Taiwan last week unveiled software that would allow universities to measure the impact that various university decisions would have on international rankings of universities, Times Higher Education reported. "We need a system to help us know what kind of strategy we can use to get on the [rankings] list," said the professor, Han-Lin Li, of National Chiao Tung University. Under the system, a university could measure the impact, for example, that recruiting a single Nobel laureate would have on the Shanghai Jiao Tong University rankings (which uses a methodology that includes the number of faculty Nobel laureates).