@petersuber@academicchatter It's a bit strange that most of the Nature commentary goes out of its way to quote other Chinese scientists who claim things are not that bad, actually.
University X offers short-term fellowships. For remuneration, it pays fellows up to $1,000 for every article they publish in Scopus-indexed journals acknowledging X as their institutional affiliation.
Who would do this? For one, the University of Religions and Denominations (Qom, Iran). Thanks to Nick Wise for publicizing the URD offer.
If uni rankings are useful at all, it's not on reputation. We could use rankings on (say) % of students on financial aid; % of faculty tenured or tenure-track; % of tenured faculty who are women, minorities; ratio of teachers to administrators; ratio of avg faculty salary to head football coach salary…