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While looking at Facebook on the train, I came across Weekly Diamond’s (10/18) “Ranking of Universities Producing Useful Talent” [1]. I have not yet obtained the magazine itself, so I do not know the details of the survey, but according to the attached image, respondents were asked to name the top 5 universities in each of the “useful” and “not useful” categories. The results were tallied by assigning 1th place 5 points, 2th place 4 points, …, and 5th place 1 point, and then calculating

“Useful (A)” − “Not Useful (B)”

to produce the ranking. Here is the result.

（出所）10/18発売週刊ダイヤモンド「使える人材を輩出した大学ランキング」
(Source) Weekly Diamond, released 10/18, “Ranking of Universities Producing Useful Talent”

This ranking makes no sense at all.

To begin with, I do not understand what it means to convert ordinal rankings into cardinal numbers and add them together, and subtracting those figures to create a ranking makes even less sense [2]. Still, there is no point lamenting that, so I tried creating a somewhat better ranking by calculating

“Useful Ratio” = “Useful (A)” / (“Useful (A)” + “Not Useful (B)”)

and ranking the results. This is shown in Table 1.

Table 1 — Revised Ranking of Universities Producing Useful Talent

Rank Diamond
Ranking		 University Useful
(A)		 Not Useful
(B)		 Diamond
Score
(A)-(B)		 (A) Ratio
1 25 Harvard University 24 0 24 100.00%
2 28 Akita International University 16 0 16 100.00%
3 6 Tokyo Institute of Technology 496 79 417 86.26%
4 11 International Christian University 209 41 168 83.60%
5 4 Hitotsubashi University 580 115 465 83.45%
6 27 Hiroshima University 22 5 17 81.48%
7 1 Keio University 2170 536 1634 80.19%
8 9 Tohoku University 250 62 188 80.13%
9 7 Osaka University 374 108 266 77.59%
10 3 Kyoto University 1041 328 713 76.04%
11 10 Tokyo University of Science 256 81 175 75.96%
12 13 Kobe University 163 52 111 75.81%
13 24 Tsuda University 50 18 32 73.53%
14 2 Waseda University 1838 684 1154 72.88%
15 22 The University of Electro-Communications 57 22 35 72.15%
16 30 Kyoto Institute of Technology 18 7 11 72.00%
17 14 Hokkaido University 144 59 85 70.94%
18 29 Otaru University of Commerce 21 9 12 70.00%
19 21 Tokyo University of Foreign Studies 65 28 37 69.89%
20 12 Doshisha University 231 105 126 68.75%
21 16 Nagoya University 113 52 61 68.48%
22 17 Kwansei Gakuin University 140 82 58 63.06%
23 20 Kyushu University 110 66 44 62.50%
24 8 Meiji University 520 322 198 61.76%
25 25 Chiba University 68 44 24 60.71%
26 22 Yokohama National University 123 88 35 58.29%
27 15 Sophia University 230 165 65 58.23%
28 5 The University of Tokyo 1596 1161 435 57.89%
29 19 Chuo University 217 171 46 55.93%
30 18 University of Tsukuba 103 82 21 55.68%
31 30 Rikkyo University 139 128 11 52.06%
32 44 Kansai University 108 138 -30 43.90%
33 60 Aoyama Gakuin University 166 307 -141 35.10%
34 61 Nihon University 239 457 -218 34.34%
35 43 Nanzan University 18 46 -28 28.13%
36 55 Seikei University 41 114 -73 26.45%
37 62 Hosei University 125 348 -223 26.43%
38 35 Kyoto Sangyo University 11 31 -20 26.19%
39 50 Kokugakuin University 23 67 -44 25.56%
40 56 Kindai University 38 119 -81 24.20%
41 58 Dokkyo University 27 116 -89 18.88%
42 34 Seijo University 6 26 -20 18.75%
43 51 Senshu University 12 62 -50 16.22%
44 49 Ochanomizu University 10 53 -43 15.87%
45 41 Saitama University 6 33 -27 15.38%
46 54 Tokai University 14 78 -64 15.22%
47 48 Toyo University 9 51 -42 15.00%
48 37 Gunma University 4 27 -23 12.90%
49 59 Gakushuin University 22 151 -129 12.72%
50 57 Meiji Gakuin University 13 95 -82 12.04%
51 53 Komazawa University 8 64 -56 11.11%
52 39 Tottori University 2 26 -24 7.14%
53 52 Teikyo University 4 55 -51 6.78%
54 40 Takasaki City University of Economics 2 28 -26 6.67%
55 33 Utsunomiya University 0 20 -20 0.00%
56 32 Kanto Gakuin University 0 20 -20 0.00%
57 36 Meisei University 0 21 -21 0.00%
58 38 Ibaraki University 0 24 -24 0.00%
59 42 Asia University 0 28 -28 0.00%
60 45 Bunkyo University 0 37 -37 0.00%
61 47 Kokushikan University 0 39 -39 0.00%
62 46 Meijo University 0 39 -39 0.00%

Harvard University, which languished in 25th place in Diamond’s ranking, has now triumphantly risen to the top.

In any case, these figures are still rather difficult to make sense of…. For your reference.

Perhaps I should go buy Weekly Diamond….

[0] After posting this blog entry, I came across a BLOGOS article titled “The University of Tokyo Moves from 5th to 29th! Recalculating the ‘Universities Producing Useful Talent’ Ranking” http://blogos.com/article/96472/ In my calculation, the University of Tokyo was 28th, so I deliberately revised the title to imitate that version. The original title was “Diamond’s ‘Ranking of Universities Producing Useful Talent’—This Won’t Do.”

[1] “Breaking News: The ‘Worst 1’ in the Ranking of Universities Useful in the Workplace Announced” http://netgeek.biz/archives/23399

[2] Since “useful/not useful” is presumably a relative assessment among the people in each workplace, comparing those assessments on the same scale also makes little sense, but let us set that aside.

 

 

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