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University Rankings of Different Academic Positions for the Present and the Future: The Case of Greek Departments of Economics
Abstract
University rankings have been based on a number of criteria, the most important of which is research output and quality. Although there is a lot of discussion on the controversy that surrounds all ranking methods, university evaluations are perhaps even more popular these days with the global economic recession. The present paper presents a methodology for ranking universities based on research using as criterion the different academic positions in a university i.e. professors, assistant professors, and uses the Greek departments of economics as a case study. The results produce useful conclusions for the present and future status of the institutes. Decision-makers can use the results as guidance to assess their present status and to identify if and how they want to improve.
... Independent organizations may not agree to cooperate or lack necessary data. Surveys are, on the other hand, frequently criticized for being too subjective (Giannias and Sfakianaki, 2012). They rely on a notion that experts possess exceptional knowledge and are able to provide a competent point of view. ...
... On the contrary, THE and ARWU correlate with the correlation strength of 0.63. If a ranking correlates less on the first fifty universities on average than on randomly chosen universities (positions 2 to 486 in rankings), it is legitimate to ask what is so dissimilar about the first positions and the question of their disinterestedness and methodological flaws arises in accordance with findings of other authors (Altbach, 2012; Giannias and Sfakianaki, 2012). Another reason for this discrepancy might be the methodological difference. ...
This paper deals with selected international rankings and their correlation with other rankings. Firstly, some methodological issues were explained. Secondly, a correlation analysis of fifty randomly chosen ranks and the first fifty ranks of three leading rankings was carried out. Subsequently, a correlation analysis with other three rankings was carried out and the results were compared. Results showed a strong correlation of the three leading rankings in case of randomly chosen ranks while the correlation was substantially weaker in case of the first fifty ranks, which raised some question concerning issues related to rankings´methodologyrankings´methodology. The correlation of other ranking was weak or moderate with two exceptions.
International rankings of universities influence the perceptions and priorities of governments, of businesses and students. Rectors and university councils see the achievement of high ranking as a strategic imperative. However, their value and benefit is questionable. The fundamental problems are two-fold: - Most seek to capture characteristics that cannot be measured directly, and require indirect proxies. How good are the proxies? - Different universities fulfil different roles, which a single monotonic scale cannot capture. How can different roles be compared in meaningful ways? None of the current ranking systems have the validity, rigour or meaning to be of real value, except those based on citations to evaluate research, and even here, they fall short in assessing research in the humanities and the social sciences. Institutions tend to target a high score irrespective of whether the metrics are good proxies for the underlying value of the institution. Rankings will at best be irrelevant to those values or, at worst, undermine them. They encourage convergence towards a research-dominated model, reducing system diversity and undermining the potential to contribute to society in other ways. But rankings have such a hold on the public imagination that they are likely to be permanent features of the landscape. Can they be improved? Two approaches have been funded by the European Commission. U-Map is an attempt at classification describing the diversity of universities by mapping activities, not quality: its purpose being transparency for stakeholders. U-Multirank is an attempt at ranking evaluating quality in dimensions analogous to those of U-Map: its purpose assessing how well universities perform their different roles, rather than holding all to research-dominated criteria. Both have serious defects. They suffer from imprecise proxies and the profound difficulty of finding comparable data between countries. The temptations will be to: - require ever more burdensome detail in the hope of penetrating to the heart of the matter, - formalise the distinctions that mapping reveals, - promote further the idea of the university as merely a source of modular products currently in vogue. LERU applauds the attempt to create U-Map as a description of diversity, but is less enthusiastic about U-Multirank because of problems of data comparability, the potential for game playing when reputations for excellence are at stake, nd for the encouragement it gives to target proxies rather than underlying reality. Although the U-Multirank approach at least provides a means of exemplifying diverse forms of excellence as an antidote to single monotonic lists, it is inevitable that its individual dimensions will be combined by others to create a single monotonic table of excellence, regardless of the strictures of its authors. However, given the likely persistence of "league tables", LERU supports the Commission's initiative to develop UMultirank as a pilot project and as a means for exploring its potential to mitigate the problems of other systems. In this spirit, a number of LERU universities have agreed to collaborate in the project with the intention of improving it as far as is possible.
Global university rankings have arrived, and though still in a process of rapid evolution, they are likely to substantially influence the long-term development of higher education across the world. The inclusions, definitions, methods, implications and effects are of great importance. This paper analyses and critiques the two principal rankings systems prepared so far, the research rankings prepared by Shanghai Jiao Tong University and the composite rankings from the Times Higher Education Supplement. It goes on to discuss the divergence between them in the performance of Australian universities, draws attention to the policy implications of rankings, and canvasses the methodological difficulties and problems. It concludes by advocating the system of university comparisons developed by the Centre for Higher Educational Development (CHE) in Germany. This evades most of the problems and perverse effects of the other rankings systems, particularly reputational and whole-of-institution rankings. It provides data more directly useful to and controlled by prospective students, and more relevant to teaching and learning.
Different methodologies for the assessment of universities have been developed over the years using criteria such as research, teaching and social input, which have been an issue of controversy. University rankings have received a lot of criticism but are still very popular for a number of parties such as academics, students, parents, funders, employers and society. Greek universities have not been ranked, up to date. The present paper presents a methodology for ranking universities based on research and education and uses the Greek departments of economics as a case study. The results allow the interested party to judge the overall performance (research and education) of the department or the research/education performance accordingly depending on the party's needs.
This paper introduces a model, which is enabling a comparison between universities regarding research, educational and environmental performances; the mission of university fits the sustainability idea. The purpose of the paper is to improve the methodology and indicators of the existing ranking tables. The three dimensional index, which provides simplified information about the quality of universities, has been developed. It enables quick detection of the weaknesses, strengths and opportunities for universities. Weights of indicators were determined using the analytic hierarchy process (AHP). Results of the AHP have shown that the most important are research oriented indicators, followed by social and environmental ones.The proposed model has been tested on a sample of 35 top universities from the ARWU (Academic Ranking of World Universities) and Times ranking tables and a new ranking table – the Three dimensional University Ranking (TUR) has been developed. In addition, correlations between indicators and ranking tables have been carried out. There is only a medium correlation between the ARWU and TUR. Regarding the indicators, a high correlation with Hirsch indices and Highly Cited Researchers exists, while there is an insignificant correlation between the low student to staff ratio and the graduation rate.
This article applies an alternative approach to the measurement of scholarly quality, namely the use of TOP-curves, in order
to rank journals in the field of environmental and resource economics. This measure summarizes the incidence, intensity, and
inequality of these journals’ highly cited articles. Moreover, TOP-curves allow analysts to rank journals according to TOP-dominance.
The journal ranking based on the TOP-dominance criterion does not match the ranking based on the journals’ impact factors.
Indeed, TOP-curves provide more detailed information on the relative ranking of journals since they take into account the
composition and the distribution of citations within the top group.
AJAE per capita page counts provide one measure of an institution’s research strength. In this article we refine WWS et al.’smeasure of department size and, based on the refined measure, recompute departmental ratrMngs for North American institutions. Results indicate that Northeastern United States departments are more widely represented among the top 20 institutions than 20 years ago and that two Canadian institutions-Guelph and British Columbia—rank in the top 12. The median A.IAEpublication frequency for the top 30 research institutions is about one article per research faculty member every 12 years. The AJAE page-count measure was found to be highly correlated (R2 = 0.82) with citation counts, whether narrowly or broadly defined. Thus, A.JA.Epage counts appear to provide a simple yet valid representation of institutional research productivity.
America and Europe differ with regard to what economics is understood to be, how it is practiced, and how professional academic economists behave. Specifically, 1) American (U.S. and Canadian) economists contribute by far the largest share of journal publications and are cited much more often than European economists, while (West-) European economists consider other aspects of their professional activities more relevant, in particular participating in local and national affairs; 2) economic research by Americans tends to focus on abstract issues defined within the profession itself and involves fads, while the activities of European economists (though not necessarily their research) are more concerned with practical issues and follow a more steady course: and 3) American academics are geared to postgraduate teaching, while in Europe they are mostly engaged in undergraduate teaching. These differences can be explained by the different market conditions faced by American and European economists: in America, the academic market is much larger, and the degree of government intervention is typically much smaller. This paper explores how this leads to different focuses for European and American economists. In addition, it asks whether the ongoing economic unification in Europe may not alter these patterns.
Citations are increasingly used to indicate the quality of an academic unit’s work. The set of literature or journals, however, becomes crucial to any ranking scheme. Citations from the broadly based Social Science Citations Index suggest a different ranking of departments than the ranking obtained from a somewhat narrowly focused set of North American journals of agricultural economics. The paper seeks to determine the influence of regional journals, joint authorship, and self-citations on departmental rankings. Data bases of citations are developed for the faculty of seventy-three departments of agricultural economics in the United States and Canada.
The World Economic Forum (WEF) is a Geneva-based non-profit organization best known for its Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland, the Annual Meeting of New Champions in China (Summer Davos) and the Summit on the Global Agenda in Dubai. It also releases research reports such as the Competitiveness Reports and Risk Reports and engages with its members in sector-specific initiatives.
Using the online citation service available through the Institute for Scientific Information and publication records, we constructed rankings of 53 North American forestry programs based on (1) total citations to the scholarly contributions of current faculty, (2) citations per research faculty member, (3) total number of publications in five top forestry journals, (4) total number of pages, (5) total number of publications per research faculty member, and (6) total number of page per research faculty member, from January 1997 to December 2001. We then compared these results against a ranking of the top forestry schools, based on perceived research profile, as indicated by survey responses from deans and department heads.
We examine the publications of authors affiliated with an economics research institution in Canada in (1) the Top-10 journals in economics according to journals' impact factors, and (2) the Canadian Journal of Economics. We consider all publications in the even years from 1980 to 2000. Canadian economists contributed about 5% of publications in the Top-10 journals and about 55% of publications in the Canadian Journal of Economics over this period. We identify the most active research centres and identify trends in their relative outputs over time. Those research centres successful in publishing in the Top-10 journals are found to also dominate the Canadian Journal of Economics. Additionally, we check the robustness of our findings with respect to journal selection, and we present data on authors' PhD origin, thereby indicating output and its concentration in graduate education.
Les auteurs examinent les publications d'auteurs affiliés à une institution de recherche économique au Canada dans (1) les dix meilleures revues en science économique telles que déterminées par les facteurs d'impact, et (2) la Revue canadienne d'économique.On examine les publications dans les années paires entre 1980 et 2000. Les économistes qui ont une adresse au Canada contribuent 5% des publications dans les dix meilleures revues, et 55% des articles dans la Revue canadienne d'économique dans cet échantillon. Les auteurs identifient les centres de recherche les plus actifs et les tendances dans leur production relative au fil du temps. Les centres qui réussissent le mieux dans les meilleures revues dominent aussi la scène dans la Revue canadienne d'économique. On vérifie la robustesse des résultats pour ce qui est de la sélection des revues, et on présente des données sur les centres où les auteurs résidant au Canada ont obtenu leur doctorat, établissant ainsi un rapport entre le niveau de production et la concentration sur certains centres d'enseignement supérieur.
This paper updates a previous ranking of economics research output in East Asia based upon page counts of articles published in sixty quality journals. A salient feature of the results is that research productivity of economics profession in East Asia has improved substantially since the early 1990s. The research output of top-tier universities in East Asia these days appears comparable to that of major state universities in the United States about a decade ago.
Until recently, ISI Thompson's Web of Science/Social Sciences Citation Index was the only rigorous tool for tracking citation
counts of academic research papers. The recent emergence of Google Scholar provides an alternative measure for tracking citation
counts for refereed journal articles, conference proceedings, working papers, and government reports. This article provides
an overview of the state of environmental and resource economics using the Google Scholar measure of citations. It ranks and
compares the major field journals, and the most cited papers in these journals, the most cited papers in the field that have
been published in general economics journals, and the most cited technical books and textbooks, as well as the most cited
researchers in the field.
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We provide a ranking of economics departments in Europe and we discuss the methods used to obtain it. TheJEL CD-ROM serves as a database for a period covering ten years. Journals are ranked using a combination of expert opinions and citation data to produce a scale from 1 to 10. The publication output and habits of fifteen European countries plus California are then compared. Individuals with a contribution greater than a predetermined minimum level are regrouped into departments which are ranked according to their total scores. A standard deviation is provided to underline the uncertainty of this ranking. (JEL: I29, D63, C12, C14) Copyright (c) 2003 The European Economic Association.
In this paper, I study the production of academic research by economics departments and economists. Worldwide rankings are provided based on both citations and publications. These rankings reveal a dominant position of the United States in the production of economics literature. Over time, however, the extent of this dominance is decreasing. (JEL: A10, A14) Copyright (c) 2003 The European Economic Association.
Economics departments in the United States are ranked based on the number of pages published in thirty-six economics journals, publications in five of the top journals, output per faculty member, and an index of the concentration of research in a department. Evidence shows that the top twenty departments have generally retained their positions since the 1970s but rather large changes have occurred in departments ranked from 240 to 100. An 'Economists Hall of Fame' is developed listing the top fifty individual producers of research in the thirty-six journal set and the top five journals. Copyright 1996 by Oxford University Press.
Economics departments in the United States are ranked using the criterion of publication in a set of eight leading journals. The publication period is 1990-94 inclusive, and faculty assignments to departments are for fall semester 1995. The ranking is compared with the publication-based rankings of Conroy-Dusansky, which it updates, and Scott-Mitias, as well as with the survey-based rankings of the National Research Council and of U.S. News and World Report. Important issues considered include current accuracy of software matching using electronic indexes, objectivity of criteria, contemporaneity of survey response, and correlations between rankings. Copyright 1998 by American Economic Association.
In this paper we provide a ranking of European economics institutions and countries based on publications in a core set of 10 economic journals from 1991 to 1996. We find that the three leading universities in Europe are the London School of Economics, Tel-Aviv University and Oxford University while the three top-ranked countries are the U.K., France and Israel.
This paper provides measures of average publication rates (and frequency distributions) of articles and pages in all journals indexed by the Index of Economics Articles over the 1980s. The study covers 733 economists holding tenured or probationary appointments at Canadian universities in the 1989-90 academic year. All article and page counts are converted to single-author-equivalent (SAE) measures by dividing by the number of authors. Over the decade, economists published on average one SAE article every 2.5 years. The paper also generates measures of publications rates in quality journals of the profession as well as rankings of university departments.
This study ranks Australian economics departments according to their average research productivity during 1998-2002. The highest ranked departments are those at ANU, JCU, Melbourne, Tasmania and UWA. We also rank departments according to the variability of research productivity among their members, the assumption being that, other things being equal, the less variable is productivity within a department, the better. Research productivity is found to be highly skewed within all departments. However, in general, research productivity is more (less) evenly distributed within those departments that have relatively high (low) average research productivity. Copyright © 2006 The Economic Society of Australia.
This study finds a bibliometric regularity in the finance literature that the number of authors publishing n papers is about 1/n(superscript "c") of those publishing one paper. The authors find that the finance literature conforms very well to the inverse square law(c = 2) if data are taken from a large collection of journals. When applied to individual finance journals, they find that values of c range from 1.95 to 3.26. They also find that top-rated journals have higher concentrations among their contributors. This implies that the phenomenon "success breeds success" is more common in higher-quality publications. Copyright 1990 by American Finance Association.
This paper measures an important component of the research output of economics and econometrics teaching departments, namely, the number of pages published, during the period 1988-93, in journals listed by the Journal of Economic Literature. Based on page counts, it is found that department rankings are similar over a broad range of journal groupings. It is also found that the median numbers of pages published by each of the groups of senior lecturers, associate professors, and professors are quite small, indicating that within these groups research output is highly concentrated among a few active publishers. Copyright 1995 by The Economic Society of Australia.
this paper we try to rectify this deficiency in the literature by both computing an updated list of journal rankings with current weights computed from their citations impact and then use those to produce a world wide ranking of academic institutions
Introduction There has been a lot of recent research literature on rankings of economics departments throughout the world. They serve as signals tools for attracting new faculty and retaining older in highly ranked institutions and also help attract the best graduate students who have academic aspirations. Many times these rankings are used by university administrators to allocate scarce education funds to dierent departments according to their success in these rankings. There has been a long standing tradition for US economic departments to be ranked (see Scott and Mitias (1996) and Dusansky and Vernon (1998) for recent such rankings). Recent European studies of this kind include Kirman and Dahl (1994) and Kalaitzidakis, Mamuneas and Stengos (1999). There have been also rankings of departments in Asia (see Jin and Yau (1999)), Canada (see Lucas (1995)), as well as Australia (see Harris (1990)). Rankings are also constructed in other related disciplines such as ...nance for the
Ένα Ευέλικτο Υπόδειγμα Αξιολόγησης της Αποτελεσματικότητας στα Ελληνικά Πανεπιστήμια
- C Bitros
- Karayiannis D Geroge
- Anastasios
Bitros C. Geroge and Karayiannis D. Anastasios, Ένα Ευέλικτο Υπόδειγμα
Αξιολόγησης της Αποτελεσματικότητας στα Ελληνικά Πανεπιστήμια,
Research Report, ΕΠΕΑΕΚ, 2000, in Greek.
University Rankings Based on Research Output and Quality: the case of Greek departments of economics
- Giannias Dimitrios
Giannias Dimitrios and Sfakianaki Eleni, "University Rankings Based on Research
Output and Quality: the case of Greek departments of economics", in The
European Union Review, in press, 2011a.
- C Bitros
- Karayiannis D Geroge
- Anastasios
Bitros C. Geroge and Karayiannis D. Anastasios, Ένα Ευέλικτο Υπόδειγμα
Αξιολόγησης της Αποτελεσματικότητας στα Ελληνικά Πανεπιστήμια,
Research Report, ΕΠΕΑΕΚ, 2000, in Greek.