China has been producing almost twice as many papers on artificial intelligence as the next highest-placed country in terms of publication volume for the field, a data analysis for Times Higher Education has shown. Data from Elsevier’s Scopus database provided to THE illustrate China’s huge drive on research in the area, with researchers in the nation notching up over 41,000 publications from 2011- 2015. In terms of volume of publications, the US is second during the period with 25,500 publications while Japan is in third place (11,700) and the UK fourth (10,100). However, although China scores high in volume terms, it is only 34th in terms of field-weighted citation impact (which allows for differences in citations according to subject and year), suggesting that most of the papers aren’t of the same quality as those published in the US (fourth for citation impact). A study of institutions that published more than 500 times on AI shows only one in China — the Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences — had a citation impact above the world average of 1. The list ranked by citation impact is topped by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a score of 3.57. This is way ahead of the rest of the chasing pack, including Carnegie Mellon University and Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. The Economist editorial on India’s school system In 1931, Mahatma Gandhi ridiculed the idea that India might have universal primary education “inside of a century”. He was too pessimistic. Since 1980, the share of Indian teenagers who have had no schooling has fallen from about half to less than one in ten. That is a big, if belated, success for the country with more school-age children, 260 million, than any other. Yet India has failed these children. Many learn precious little at school. India may be famous for its elite doctors and engineers, but half of its nine-year-olds cannot do a sum as simple as eight plus nine. Half of ten-year-old Indians cannot read a paragraph meant for seven-year-olds. At 15, pupils in Tamil Nadu and Himachal Pradesh are five years behind their (better-off) peers in Shanghai. The average 15-year-old from these states would be in the bottom 2 percent of an American class. India has long had a lopsided education system. In colonial times, the British set up universities to train civil servants, while neglecting schools. India’s first elected leaders expanded this system, pouring money into top-notch colleges to supply engineers to state-owned industries. By contrast, Asian tigers such as South Korea and Taiwan focused on schools. Of late, India has done more to help those left behind. Spending on schools rose by about 80 percent in 2011-15. The literacy rate has risen from 52 percent in 1991 to 74 percent in 2011. Free school lunches — one of the world’s largest nutrition schemes — help millions of pupils who might otherwise be too hungry to learn. However, the quality of schools remains a scandal. Many teachers are simply not up…
