News Flash: Otago University no longer calls itself a "University", so it should take that word out of its name.

Lucky we did a screen shot. We previously called out Otago University for its misleading website aimed at recruiting staff and students, which has consistently repeated the claim that it is "world top 1% University". Here's the proof:

Whether it is before the most recent rankings, or based on them, Otago has never had that "top 1%" ranking, which would put it alongside Princeton, Cambridge, National University of Singapore, Melbourne, MIT and Harvard. Auckland announced this week, “Waipapa Taumata Rau, University of Auckland, now sits in the top 7.3% of universities in the world". Auckland's was 152 out of 2,000 ranked universities and Otago between 350 and 400. A "Ōtākou Whākaihu Waka" spokesperson said, “We're proud to remain the second-ranked university in NZ". Ooops. There's a humungous Comms / PR / marketing fail with that announcement. Auckland is top 7.3% in the world and Otago says its second in NZ - putting it at around top 20%. But Otago has long stated, as per the screen shot above, that it is top 1%. Probably due to nervousness over this Blog's writings, this is how Otago has responded, and its rather hilarious, if not pathetic. The University's recently updated website says this:

Note the word "universities" has been replaced by "higher education institutions". Higher education is a weasel word that includes everything, from the Oklahoma Home Baking Polytechnic, to the Hawaii Higher Education College of Surfing Moves. But let's be fair to those places, many of which are damn good. To my knowledge, there is no ranking of the world's "higher education institutions", since there are hundreds of thousands of them and its like comparing apples with oranges. Maybe the new University of Otago Vice Chancellor, Grant Robertson, can use part of his new $629,000 salary to take the time to clearly state to the NZ Mainstream Media why the word "universities" was changed, as per the above screen shots, on Otago's website, to now read "higher education institutions"? Does he no longer consider Otago to be a University? Then take it out of your official name.

Sources:

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/auckland-otago-tumble-in-just-released-world-university-rankings/F5HHYWPNFBFXPC7YZV2HYZMKIA/

https://www.odt.co.nz/news/dunedin/campus/otago-university-drops-lowest-international-ranking

https://www.timeshighereducation.com/world-university-rankings/latest/world-ranking

Rotorua Lakes High School AI Founder Shane Legg Narrowly Misses out on the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

This Blog has long followed the career of our most influential (now London-based) New Zealander Shane Legg, since we find his rise from Rotorua Lakes High School to become one of the world's most influential people, remarkable. Its on a par with Nelson-born Kiwi Ernest Rutherford. We met up many years ago in London. He did an MSc in maths at the University of Auckland. Yesterday Legg narrowly missed out on the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, which he probably should have been included in: two of the winners are his colleagues at Deep Mind, the company which, more than any other by a long way, began the Artificial Intelligence Revolution. Legg founded Deep Mind with Demis Hassabis, when they were students at University College London, and sold it to Google for $NZ 800 million. That was probably a mistake, given Elon Musk wanted to be their partner (since Google has now become like any other huge managerial monopoly corporation that emphasizes short term profits over long-term innovation, according to off-the-record comments from Kiwi insiders there). Hassabis & John Jumper at Deep Mind, now a division of Google, won the Nobel for their work on computational protein design. There is some controversy about the Prize, since Hassabis is the CEO of the company, whereas shy & humble Kiwi Legg took on the position of Chief Scientist there. No doubt he was intimately connected with, and probably largely ultimately responsible, for much of the computation work for which the Nobel was awarded. Its unusual to give the Prize to a CEO, who's more the business boss, rather than to a "Chief Scientist" type of person. Whatever one says about Kiwi universities, a bunch of our graduates are reshaping the world.