A scene taken near the main gate of Seoul National University

Though many Korean colleges aspire to be one of the nation's "top universities", even this position seems to lack merit whenever a world ranking list is compiled and broadcast.

In The Times of Britain's list of 200 most famous institutes in the world, published in November, SNU was ranked 119, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) 160 and Pohang University of Science and Technology came in at 163.

Eight universities in Asia ranked at or above 50, but none of them were located on the peninsula. Tokyo University came 12, Beijing University 17, Singapore National University 18, Kyoto University 29, Hong Kong University 39, the Indian Institute of Technology 41, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology 42 and Singapore Nanyang University 50.

On Shanghai Jiao Tong University's list of the world's most famous 500 universities, SNU ranked within the 153-201 group. Yonsei University barely scraped the 300-or-over group, while KAIST, Pohang University of Science and Technology and Sungkyunkwan University ranked lower than 400. Hanyang University, Korea University and Kyungbuk University fared even worse at being placed below 500.

In contrast, five Japanese universities were listed in the top 100, with Tokyo University coming in at 14.

SNU again became an object of censure for failing to make the top 100 world rankings. An SNU official complained that people bash the university based on an external ranking system without delving into why such rankings are unavoidable. This merits a brief discussion into the ranking criteria.

Shanghai Jiao Tong University evaluated the world's top teaching centers according to six standards. These include the number of graduates who have received Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals, said to be the Nobel equivalent in the field of mathematics. For this, the institute awarded a mark of 10 percent. For professors who had received either of the two awards, institutes were scored out of 20 percent, while the number of outstanding researchers whose theses in life science, medicine, physics, engineering and social sciences are frequently quoted merited a maximum 20 percent. For the number of theses published in "Nature" or "Science", the Chinese university marked colleges out of a total 20 percent, and for the number of SCI theses, a further 20 percent. The points were then aggregated by dividing the five standards between the number of faculty staff.

Areas related to Nobel Prizes account for about one-third of the evaluation points. SNU is destined to fail in this area as it has no Nobel Prize winners, said one of the college's officials.

In all of the initial three criteria, SNU was given a mark of zero. In the evaluation of its SCI theses, however, it was granted 62.6 points (compared to 100 for first-ranked Harvard University), which was higher than sixth-place California Instutute of Technology (53.2 points) and seventh-place Princeton University (46.8 points).

In ranking the top 200 world universities, The Times used five indexes: The number of peer reviews by 1,300 professors in each country (50 percent), degree of research influence based on the number of theses quoted per professor (20 percent), the ratio of students to professors (20 percent), the ratio of foreign students (5 percent) and the ratio of foreign professors (5 percent).

SNU stood at 119 based on these criteria, after being poorly assessed for having a low degree of research influence (141), a low ratio of students to professors (138) and a dismal ratio of foreign professors (169). However, it fared better in terms of peer reviews (63) and the ratio of foreign students (76).

Harvard University, ranked 1, received excellent points for the peer review category (2), the degree to which its research influenced others (4) and the ratio of students to professors (8), but rated low in terms of foreign students (93) and the proportion of foreign professors (100).

Despite its myriad excuses, SNU cannot completely defend itself from disparaging views revealed by insiders and outsiders.

In the Shanghai Jiao Tong University rankings, a number of institutes that did not have any Nobel Prize winners managed to rank ahead of SNU. Arizona University was ranked 79 and Hokkaido University, Kyushu University and Singapore National University were ranked between 101 and 152.

"A problem more serious than ranking and a call for abolishing SNU is that we alone are unaware of our problems. While our present status is so poor, aren't we merely holding on to superstition by telling ourselves that we are still OK?" wrote Professor Hong Jun-hyong of SNU's Graduate School of Adminsitration in an article published in the campus paper.

(Yang Kun-man, yangkm@chosun.com )