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Advanced Artificial Intelligence (Some of the Lecture Slides)
A Game of Aggregation, But Not Integration...
There’s something haunting about an abandoned structure that still stands—barely—held together by what remains rather than what was intended. Imagine a pyramid-shaped brick wall, once sturdy, now fractured. Some bricks are stamped “high citations,” others “low citations.” A few are cracked. Several at the base are missing entirely. Yet, from a distance, it still looks impressive—perhaps even worthy of admiration.
This is what happens when institutional ranking becomes a game of numbers rather than a reflection of intellectual integrity.
In many academic systems today, citations have become a dominant currency. They are easy to count, easy to compare, and convenient to display. So convenient, in fact, that they begin to substitute for deeper measures of academic health—teaching quality, mentorship, original thinking, risk-taking, and the slow, often invisible work of building a scholarly ecosystem.
Now consider a strategy: improve ranking by leveraging the citation records of past faculty and hiring new ones based primarily—sometimes exclusively—on citation metrics. On paper, it works. The numbers rise. Rankings improve. Visibility increases. It looks like progress.
But look closer at the structure.
The base—the foundational layers of any institution—is not made of citations. It is made of culture, pedagogy, intellectual diversity, collaboration, and long-term commitment. When these are neglected, the lower layers begin to erode. Teaching suffers. Young researchers receive less mentorship. Departments lose coherence. Academic risk-taking declines because safe, citation-friendly work is rewarded more than bold, uncertain inquiry.
Meanwhile, the visible layers—the ones carrying the “high citation” labels—are carefully arranged to impress. They give the illusion of strength. But they are not structurally integrated into a living, breathing academic foundation. They are often isolated metrics, detached from the institutional ecosystem that sustains real scholarship.
Even more concerning is the randomness introduced into this system. Not every highly cited researcher contributes equally to institutional growth. Not every low-citation academic lacks value. When hiring decisions are reduced to citation counts, the process becomes less about fit, vision, or contribution, and more about numerical signaling. It’s like placing labeled bricks into a wall without considering where they belong—or whether they belong at all.
Over time, gaps begin to appear. Missing bricks at the base—those representing neglected teaching, ignored students, unsupported early-career faculty—create structural weaknesses. Cracks form where short-term gains override long-term planning. The pyramid still stands, but it becomes increasingly fragile.
And here’s the paradox: the ranking may continue to improve even as the institution weakens.
Why? Because rankings often measure what is easy to quantify, not what is essential to sustain. Citations accumulate from past work. Newly hired faculty bring their previous metrics with them. The system rewards aggregation, not integration.
But institutions are not aggregates. They are ecosystems.
A strong institution grows from the ground up. It invests in its base—students, early-career researchers, teaching practices, interdisciplinary dialogue. It values contributions that may not immediately translate into citations but shape the intellectual climate over decades. It hires not just for past metrics but for future potential and alignment with institutional goals.
Citations matter, of course. They reflect impact, visibility, and engagement with the broader academic community. But they are a signal—not the structure itself.
If we mistake the signal for the structure, we end up with that abandoned pyramid: still standing, still impressive from afar, but hollowed out, unstable, and disconnected from its foundation.
The real challenge, then, is not to reject metrics, but to place them in context. To ask not just “how many citations?” but “what kind of institution are we building?” To recognize that sustainable excellence is not a stack of high-performing individuals, but a carefully constructed system where every layer supports the next.
Because in the end, a ranking can rise even as a foundation crumbles. But only one of those can hold the future.
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