Dear colleagues and
students,
this year's comprehensive accreditation results of the
faculty from the agency called ARRA may be disappointing. The arguments for why it is like this do not change as the
criterion for ARRA does not change. I have
previously said that they are really suitable for the determination of the
best, but without respect for the economic environment in which the faculty and
universities operate. A demonstration of this is for example, the most
successful technical faculties in the ARRA rating must be in the frame of the
SUT and funded by the redistribution of the appropriate state money at the
expense of the lower funded. Furthermore if any one of you make the effort to
click on the following links you may easily find that no two credit rating and
ranking agencies display the same results due to their own criteria.
(For example compare: Http://www.webometrics.info,
http://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/world-university-rankings/2009/results)
Back to the current
ARRA results:
Although we currently hold 19th place , belonging to the group of faculties that are between 14th and 19th place with a minimal difference in points (the ARRA report of 2009 evaluates all outputs of the previous year, ie. in 2008).
Comparison with previous years:
-2007 (2006): 32.0 points, 16th place, belonging to a group of faculties with similar scores (2 points in difference) for 14th - 20th place.
-2008 (2007): 37.0 points, 16th place, group 15 - 19
-2009 (2008): 35.1 points, 19th place, group 14 - 19
The agency ARRA assesses 5 criterion consisting of partial parameters. Internal structure (eg. weighting and interaction) of various parameters of the report can be criticized on the known information which is shown in the following:
Criterion 1. ‘Teachers and students', consisting of factors:
SV1: Proportion of all students to one teacher.
SV2: The ratio of students to professors and associate professors.
SV3: Ratio of Professors, Associate Professors, PhD to all teachers.
SV4: Ratio of Professors and Associate professors to all teachers.
In this criteria the FMST holds 19th place out of the of 24 evaluated technical colleges. Without considering other influences, in order to improve ARRA criteria we should do the following:
(a) Reduce the amount of students in the 1st and 2nd year and this will improve SV1, SV2.
(b) Increase the number of professors and associate professors, partly assistants with PhD., this will improve SV3 andSV4.
(c) If we reduce the number of teachers without a PhD., this should improve SV3, but worsen SV1.
2nd Criteria, "Interested in learning" is composed as follows:
SV6: Ratio of : Proportion of enrolled candidates to the planned number of candidates.
SV7: Ratio of : Proportion of enrolled students to applied students.
SV8: The share of foreign students.
Here is the FMST at 7th place and in order to improve (again, ignoring the context of the accreditation criteria and subsidy) the following should be done :
(a) To consider less students who want to enter (SV6).
(b) To increase the proportion of registered / applied candidates (ie. administrative ?!?!) , we should only accept those candidates who have actually enrolled (SV7).
(c )Increasing the numbers of foreign students (SV8). Of course, we welcome every foreign student who accepts the system of study at the FMST. On the other hand, the FMST leadership has repeatedly refused to provide, on a commercial basis, specific conditions of study for organized groups of foreign students culminating in a full diploma.
3rd Criteria , ‘publications and citations', consisting of:
VV1: Number of publications in the ‘WoK' for the years 1999-2008, for the creative worker.
VV2: Number of citations ‘WoK' for the years 1999-2008 for the creative worker.
VV2a: Number of citations ‘Wok' for the years 1999-2008 for publication.
In this area we are at 13th place. Surely you will agree with me that the 10 evaluated years make space for a large amount of persistence at this point. I also think that the trend of the FMST, due to the support of publishing activities is good.
(a) K VV1: At the faculty we decided to implement only publications that take into account the Accreditation Commission or the Ministry Department which distribute funds so the faculty can not make compromises in the future. It is true that the total number of faculty publications decreased, but significantly increased the number of publications called ‘site index publications accepted by both of the mentioned institutions.
(b) K VV2 and VV2a: I really can not provide an instant recipe here, but it may be assumed that the focus on high-value publications in English will shortly come to fruition.
4th criteria : "Doctoral studies" include:
VV4a: Share of post-doctoral students and first year doctoral study students for three consecutive years.
VV5: The annual average number of doctoral graduates in the last 3 years and the number of professors and associate professors.
VV6: The number of graduates divided by the number of full-time students in bachelor's and Master's degrees.
The FMST, in this criteria, is in 17th place. The most perceptive of you may see that this criteria penalizes those who increase the number of graduates each year (and those that depend on the results of research and science - ie. those that are improving the scientific research activities, are disadvantaged due to this criteria).
To improve the performance in this criteria (If you reject the absurd possibility of reducing the number of doctoral students, it would help us to excellently meet VV4a criteria) :
(a) It is necessary to increase the success of doctoral graduates (VV4a, VV5).
(b) Reduce the number of students at 1st and 2nd degree (master) levels (VV6) - for various reasons it is very difficult to meet the requirements if we consider the quality of education and economics from the faculty.
5th Criteria : "Grants" ,consists of :
VV7: Grant funds KEGA and VEGA for the creative worker in 2008.
VV8: Grant funds APVV for creative workers in 2008.
VV9: Grant money from foreign grants for creative workers in 2008.
VV10: Total grant funds for the creative workers in 2008.
The faculty is evaluated at 17th place. The trend is good here because our success in obtaining and receiving the grants is still on the increase. I must admit that I do not understand why other grants are evaluated in groups and then further evaluation of there amounts takes place.
Ladies and gentlemen,
the University and Faculty receive no state subsidy based
on the results of ARRA and no comprehensive accreditation is done by the criterion which is applied by this
ranking and rating agency. Next year ARRA will receive government subsidies and
it is questionable whether it will evaluate the Slovak universities. This would
be a very purposeful statement to this problem, since it can be assumed that
candidates for study will have to consider the choice of their University in
the near future on the basis of similar evaluations. The low assessment from the
ARRA agency is not good for the university faculty which received high
evaluation results from a comprehensive accreditation. The management of the
FMST does not care about assessments of this nature and only analyzed them with
no action (the results from this assessment are inadequate and of little
meaning).
I would finally like to
express the belief that the current set of performance criteria for monitoring
in the field of science, research and teaching at the FMST will improve the
quality of our work and in a few years will provide a much better assessment of
the faculty in important places and also agencies like ARRA and similar.
Prof. Dr. Ing.Oliver
Moravcik Associate Professor Ing.Peter Schreiber
PhD.
Dean Chairman of AS
FMST
Added: 09/12/2009