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World-class Universities, a Dynamic Multivariate Analysis Through International Rankings
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p>Presentamos una revisión sistemática de la literatura científica sobre rankings universitarios. En concreto, hemos indagado sobre la existencia de tendencias en los métodos utilizados en los estudios publicados en artículos de revistas especializadas.
La muestra de artículos seleccionados de acuerdo a los criterios de búsqueda planteados ha sido de 28 artículos. Las fuentes de datos provienen de las bases de datos ISI y SCOPUS on-line utilizando las palabras clave “rankings”, “higher education” y “universidad” en ciencias sociales y humanidades en el período 2000 a 2012.
Los resultados de la revisión sistemática nos muestran que los artículos publicados tienen una orientación más cuantitativa (N=22) que cualitativa (N=6), con enfoques más generalistas (N=21) que específicos (N=7), con pretensión generalizadora (N=24) frente (N=4) a los de alcance local y que la mayor concentración de las referencias que incluyen los artículos analizados han estado publicados entre los años 2005-2010.
Se concluye que existe un creciente interés y preocupación por los estudios, investigaciones y publicaciones de artículos sobre rankings universitarios.
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Despite some theoretical and technical criticism, scholars largely acknowledge the influence of universities’ ranking positions on the preferences of fund providers, academics and students, nationally and internationally. Considering their noticeable contribution to university rankings, prominent indicators can guide university leaders to develop better strategies by targeting common aspects of international ranking systems. The purpose of this research is therefore to specify the significant indicators and to examine their individual weight through an expanded indicator-set of international university rankings. The research benefited from the predictive approach of correlational research. The dataset was composed of universities’ scores in the 2018 ARWU, THE, QS and URAP world university rankings and includes the scores of 224 universities. The data were re-organised following the expanded indicator-set previously formulated by the researcher. Regression analyses were then employed in two steps to explore significant predictors through the expanded indicator-set. The researcher also re-calculated the percentage values of seven combined indicators: citation, income, internationalisation, prize, publication, reputation and ratios/degrees. The findings showed that while all these indicators are statistically significant, the components of research reputation contribute 73.71% to universities’ ranking scores. On the other hand, income is the only negative contributor with a weight of − 1.78%. The research also revealed that when comparing two scores based on re-calculated and assigned weights, only 19 universities occupy the same position among the 224 universities. Following these results, the researcher then discusses various policies and practices with the potential to expedite universities’ ranking success. Considering the data reliability and longitudinal feasibility, several recommendations were also developed for further research on university ranking systems.
University rankings have gradually become an issue for concern in the academic
community worldwide. Several mechanisms with different methodologies have been
developed to rank the universities appropriately. However, some ranking tools have
notable issues, especially with the indicators adopted. Some are based merely on research performance, whilst others have focused solely on specific fields, such as science and technology – which could have deprived those in the arts and social sciences. This paper uses a narrative review to highlight a number of inconsistencies in the methodologies applied to rank universities. Five main ranking tools commonly applied to the world's universities are reviewed, namely Quacquarelli Symonds (QS), Times Higher Education (THE), Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU), Leiden University ranking and Webometrics ranking. We found that several flaws in the rankings caused inconsistencies in university placings in different rankings. Suggestions for integrating multiple criteria and indicators for better ranking exercises are proposed.
Los rankings universitarios internacionales son un fenómeno polémico pero de creciente repercusión y alcance en el conjunto de la sociedad. Mientras crecen también los cuestionamientos vinculados a la capacidad efectiva de este instrumento para valorar la calidad de la educación y a la metodología aplicada, son presentados, sobre todo en el debate que promueven los medios de comunicación, como fuentes rigurosas y objetivas de evaluación de la calidad de las universidades. Sin embargo, las consultoras que los comercializan generalmente están vinculadas a las grandes editoriales internacionales dominantes en el mercado de revistas académicas. Existen poderosos intereses comerciales detrás de estos sistemas de evaluación vinculados al control de las revistas con referato y sus impactos. Paralelamente al crecimiento de su legitimidad y prestigio ante la sociedad, se plantean conflictos con otros actores por la coordinación de la educación superior, en particular las universidades afectadas, los Estados que intentan promover mecanismos efectivos de mejora de la calidad y también aquellos mercados que ocuparán a los graduados universitarios y buscan competencias diferentes a las que promueve el mercado editorial, interesado únicamente en la publicación de papers. Por estas razones, los rankings dudosamente contribuyen a valorar efectivamente la calidad de las universidades y su acción tampoco es neutra, dado que a medida que aumenta su injerencia pueden promover sesgos y distorsiones en los procesos y prácticas desarrollados por las universidades. Palabras clave: rankings universitarios internacionales; coordinación de la educación superior; editoriales internacionales de revistas académicas
Purpose
Study how economic parameters affect positions in the Academic Ranking of World Universities’ top 500 published by the Shanghai Jiao Tong University Graduate School of Education in countries/regions with listed higher education institutions.
Design/methodology/approach
The methodology used capitalises on the multi-variate characteristics of the data analysed. The multi-colinearity problem posed is solved by running principal components prior to regression analysis, using both classical (OLS) and robust (Huber and Tukey) methods.
Findings
Our results revealed that countries/regions with long ranking traditions are highly competitive. Findings also showed that some countries/regions such as Germany, United Kingdom, Canada, and Italy, had a larger number of universities in the top positions than predicted by the regression model. In contrast, for Japan, a country where social and economic performance is high, the number of ARWU universities projected by the model was much larger than the actual figure. In much the same vein, countries/regions that invest heavily in education, such as Japan and Denmark, had lower than expected results.
Research limitations
Using data from only one ranking is a limitation of this study, but the methodology used could be useful to other global rankings.
Practical implications
The results provide good insights for policy makers. They indicate the existence of a relationship between research output and the number of universities per million inhabitants. Countries/regions, which have historically prioritised higher education, exhibited highest values for indicators that compose the rankings methodology; furthermore, minimum increase in welfare indicators could exhibited significant rises in the presence of their universities on the rankings.
Originality/value
This study is well defined and the result answers important questions about characteristics of countries/regions and their higher education system.
In the 21st century, sustainability and indicators of world-class universities have come within the scope of an academic cottage industry. The complex problem of university sustainability implies a big challenge for countries and educators to implement important strategies in an integrated and comprehensive way. This paper highlights and analyzes the sustainability indicators of universities included as newly formed world-class universities (NFWCUs) in the top 100 from 2010 and 2018. The integration of three global ranking scales—the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU), the Quacquarelli–Symonds World University Ranking (QS) and the Times Higher Education World University Rankings (THEs)—allows us to minimize the impact of the methodology used. This study integrates regression analysis by using statistical grouping, case studies and normative analysis. Our principal findings are as follows: among the commonly ranked top 100 universities in 2018, the ARWU, QS and THE counted 57, compared with 47 in 2010. Thus, comparing 2010 and 2018 shows that 44 of the universities appeared simultaneously in ARWU, QS and THE rankings and maintained a sustainable position in any ranking system in the family of top 100 groups. Three lower-ranked NFWCUs in the hybrid list for 2010 lost their ranking and did not appear in the group of top 100 universities in 2018, which are covered by some catch-up and young universities. The NFWCUs were from US, Australia, China, Singapore, Germany and Belgium. By systematic comparison, the US and UK continued to dominate the stability of NFWCUs in 2010 and 2018. The key sustainability indicators include a high concentration of talent, abundant resources to offer a rich learning environment and conduct advanced research. Generally, the factors were negatively associated with ranking suggesting that a higher score result in top ranking and vice versa. Teaching, research, citation and international outlook were negatively correlated with THE ranking in 2018. Similarly, Alumni and PUB were negatively associated with ARWU ranking in 2018. All factors except international student ratio were significantly correlated in QS ranking either in 2010 or 2018, where negative association was observed. The significant contribution of our study is to highlight that for the sustainability of universities, it is necessary to have an increasing emphasis on the effectiveness and efficiency of government-supported research, stability of investments and more approaches to employ international initiatives. The results also confirm the appropriate governance, developing global students and place emphasis on science and technology as additional factors in the approaches of pathways to NFWCUs, with delivery of outstanding educational programs and comprehensive internationalization as a key indicator for performance improvement and global university ranking systems.
In this paper two of the better-known university rankings produced internationally are considered, the Academic Ranking World Universities (ARWU) and the Times Higher Education World Universities Rankings (THE), as well as a national ranking, the Folha University Ranking (RUF), focussed on Brazilian universities. The thesis we put forward is that rankings play a dual role, regulating the market and disseminating organizational models. The paper highlights the existence of differences between the concerns (and implications) of the international rankings (ARWU and THE) and the Brazilian national ranking (RUF), which sets out as main goals, on the one hand, to steer the elites’ demand for tertiary education towards degrees with higher employability and, on the other, to provide indications which may be considered useful for the labour market to recruit better qualified professionals.
El interés en los rankings globales de universidades ha crecido significativamente a lo largo de los últimos 10 años. El uso de indicadores simples y sintéticos, la facilidad de interpretación de la información que contienen, el fomento de la competencia entre las universidades, así como la posibilidad de compararlas entre sí, son algunos de los factores que han popularizado su aplicación. Al mismo tiempo, sus críticos han identificado problemas en relación a cuestiones tanto conceptuales como técnicas y metodológicas. Este artículo aborda tres temas que han suscitado un intenso debate metodológico sobre los rankings de universidades: la replicabilidad de los resultados, la relevancia de los indicadores, y la recopilación de datos. También propone una herramienta para estimar las puntuaciones de los dos indicadores de mayor interés para la mayoría de las universidades (Documentos publicados en Nature o Science y publicaciones en WoS). Se informa sobre un método alternativo desarrollado para calcular la puntuación de cualquier universidad en los dos indicadores de ranking más importantes de Shanghái. Una de las principales características del método propuesto es que los input necesarios son fácilmente accesibles para los gestores de política científica, autoridades académicas, estudiantes, y otros grupos de interés, pudiéndose aplicar directamente. Además, con este modelo también se pueden estimar las puntuaciones para las universidades que no figuran entre las primeras 500 en el ranking de Shanghái.
Este estudio propone la elaboración de un meta-ranking con las 14 universidades españolas que aparecen en al menos cuatro de los cinco rankings globales considerados, que son de reconocida notoriedad internacional. Se puede diferenciar entre rankings de investigación con datos bibliométricos y rankings que tienen en cuenta otros aspectos y otras formas de recabar datos basadas en encuestas. Las universidades españolas alcanzan mejores posiciones en los primeros que en los segundos. Se pone de relieve una debilidad mayor en la internacionalización, la reputación o el ratio estudiante-profesor que en los indicadores de investigación. Son excepción las universidades que destacan en las dos dimensiones. A la vista de estas conclusiones resulta evidente la necesidad de profundizar en una mayor internacionalización, en mejorar la reputación y mejorar la visibilidad internacional de la universidad española.
Any reflection on equity in the context of higher education in Spain must bear in mind two closely linked, complementary and transversal elements. The first is the process of convergence and globalisation in which the country's universities are immersed, all the while striving to maintain their unique features and the contexts of their local and national environments. Second is their efforts to apply and define the concept “equity” in higher education policies and practices. Spain's universities are attempting to put into practice the meaning behind the concept of “equity”, in function of the way it is used.
The university of the twenty first century is undergoing profound and rapid transformations. As central institutions in the vertebration of today's societies, universities are permeable to the changes, contradictions and effects derived from global inequality or, put another way, to the inequalities that radiate towards their world (Piketty, 2014). Inequality is not something external to them but, rather, something that has penetrated their realm (Burawoy, 2015). As part of an asymmetric world, today's universities are not impervious to the social dialectic around them. Neither can they ignore the newly configured rules of the social game. Today's universities not only explain social reality, but as part of it, they contribute to building it as well. This they do from both the theoretical scaffolds they erect and through the creativity of their actions (Joas, 2013). Today's universities find themselves at a crossroads where they must at once become and convey instrumental tools, while at the same time respond to the ever-growing clamour for emancipation.
Today's university is a player that not only explains social change, but also promotes and is committed to it and, for this reason, is responsible for social change. One of the ideas this chapter will develop is the notion that the university of the twenty first century must endeavour to redefine itself by reinterpreting two of its principal functions: it must generate equity while building citizenship (Beltrán, 2015a ).
The concept of equity in the educational environment was first broached in the OECD conference in Sweden in 1961 (Halsey, 1993). At that time, the debate centred on election at secondary schools, yet with the expansion of higher education, interest grew in the principle of equal opportunities.
Later, the OECD examined “Approaches to Equity in Policy for Lifelong Learning” with a study by Ben Levin in 2003. Levin distinguishes two dimensions in his definition of equity in education. The first of these is fairness, which implies making sure an individual's personal and social circumstances – for example, gender, socioeconomic status and ethnic origin – do not prevent her from reaching her educational potential. The second embraces inclusion and implies that a minimum basic educational standard must be guaranteed for all (Levin, 2003).
The meeting of OECD Ministers of Education in Athens in 2006 focused on higher education to discuss Higher Education – Quality, Equity and Efficiency. The ministers agreed that “Higher Education plays a vital role in driving economic growth and social cohesion” (Santiago et al., 2008). A year later, in 2007, The OECD published a study called called No more failures. Ten Steps to Equity in Education. This study also developed the two dimensions associated with equity that Levin had already identified, fairness and inclusion (Field, Kuzcera and Pont, 2007).
Equity and equality (on the latter, see Williams, 1983) are principles that are closely linked, yet distinct. Equity introduces a principle of ethics or fairness to equality. Promoting equity involves the task of setting out the objectives to be achieved in order to advance towards a fairer society. A society that treats its members with absolute equality will be an unfair society, as it will not take into account differences that exist between individuals and groups. Yet, at the same time, a society where people do not recognize each other as equals cannot be fair. Manuel Mendes concurs with Oscar Espinoza that there can be no equity or social cohesion without policies for inclusion and solidarity. Among these strategies, the university is considered one of the tools at hand to promote the common good and democratic citizenship (Mendes, 2014: 23-39).
Today, the increase in inequalities in the access that countries and individuals have to the use of resources has led to positing that the objectives of equity are vital to development. Without entering here into conceptual disquisitions, the introduction of the notion of “equity” in an analysis of education is not trivial. Putting equity in the equation has not only shifted our perspective, but has changed our sensitivity and perception as well. This has been translated principally into the acceptance of the importance of social variables in the field of education. Today education is conceptualised from the perspective of its social dimension, and particularly, as an element of the common good (UNESCO, 2015).
This change may bring, in turn, a shift in two of education's dimensions: one the one hand, we may see a move away from the dominant analytical thought of the last few decades, characterized by the prevalence of a clearly economic orientation, against the background of the thesis of human capital as its discourse for legitimacy, and with the emergence of a powerful industry of indicators associated with a kind of arithmetic imperialism. On the other hand, the international organisations' avidity to coin the term “equity” and to incorporate it into the new educational rhetoric may be a symptom that suggests that the principle of equality (of opportunities, access, results) is being eroded at the hands of a double standard that is gaining ground in the area of education.
It is not the objective of this chapter to enter into a epistemological discussion of the notion of equity (for this academic debate, see among others, Beltrán, 2010; Beltrán and Teodoro, coord., 2013; Teodoro and Guilherme, eds., 2014) but, rather, to describe and map the equity policies as they are applied in the higher education institutions in Spain. It's synthesis of the most relevant features of this process will provide an overview of the situation today. The initial hypothesis of this chapter maintains that equity policies in Spain, which to a certain extent are the reflexion of international educational policies, are closely linked to a process of relative democratisation of the country's universities. However, this is not democratisation in the strict sense, but a democratisation process that needs nuancing, as will be discussed below. Our universities undergo periodic crises that bring to the fore issues of inclusion and social justice. Here, we coincide with Saeed Paivandi's observations concerning higher education in France: As this author, we observe a certain decrease in inequality in access, yet the appearance of new forms of inequality. We see a contrast between the university's “quantitative democratisation” and subtle, yet appreciable forms of inequality that are being generated along the lines of Spain's social stratification (Paivandi, 2014: 264-268).
The chapter that follows is structured in three sections: The first provides an overview of higher education in Spain, with special emphasis on recent processes of democratisation and modernisation. The second focuses on higher education in Spain today in terms of its reflection in the country's social structure. The third describes Spain's policies to promote equity in higher education, centring on questions of gender, access, permanence and scholarships as vectors that reflect the tensions between social equality and inequality. The chapter ends with recommendations concerning the articulation of measures to anticipate problems and improve inclusion in higher education. We discuss how to strengthen and improve educational opportunities with a view to preventing and overcoming social inequality. The ultimate goal of these measures is to help society move beyond the relative democratisation that higher education foments and help it grow towards substantive democratisation.
In the various world university ranking schemes, the Overall is a sum of the weighted indicator scores. As the indicators are of a different nature from each other, Overall conceals important differences. Factor analysis of the data from three prominent ranking schemes reveals that there are two factors in each of the ranking systems. For Academic Rankings of World University, the two factors are both academic in nature with a time element and are negatively correlated. For the QS World University Ranking (QSWUR) and Times Higher Education World University Rankings (THEWUR), there are two factors each, one for academic excellence and one for managerial excellence. The two factors in QSWUR have a low negative correlation, but the two factors in THEWUR are not correlated. These findings do not support the assumption that the indicators are mutually supporting and additive as conceptualised by the ranking providers. To avoid misinterpretation of the Overall, it is suggested that world university ranking needs be re-conceptualised to have a higher-order institutional excellence, comprising two lower-order measures based on academic excellence and managerial excellence. Possible future development is discussed.
En este trabajo se analiza el interés de los rankings nacionales de universidades para visibilizar la actividad investigadora de estas instituciones en países no centrales. Para ello, en la primera parte de carácter metodológico, se presentan las características de los rankings nacionales que se muestran más adecuados para identificar y comparar las actividades de las instituciones de un mismo entorno. Se describen, además, las ventajas y limitaciones de la utilización de múltiples indicadores frente a indicadores sintéticos. En la segunda parte se presenta el Observatorio IUNE como una herramienta que ofrece información amplia y variada para el seguimiento de la actividad investigadora de las universidades españolas. Los datos obtenidos permiten conocer las características del sistema universitario español, así como posicionar a las instituciones en función de su actividad en 6 dimensiones diversas a partir de 42 indicadores distintos.
University rankings frequently struggle to delineate the separate contributions of institutional size and excellence. This presents a problem for public policy and university leadership, for example by blurring the pursuit of excellence with the quest for growth. This paper provides some insight into the size/excellence debate by exploring the explicit contribution of institutional size to the results of the Shanghai ranking indicators. Principal components analysis of data from the Shanghai ranking (2013 edition) is used to explore factors that contribute to the variation of the total score. The analysis includes the five non-derived ARWU indicators (Alumni, Award, HiCi, S&N and PUB) and uses the number of equivalent full-time academic staff (FTE) as a measure of size. Two significant but unequal factors are found, together explaining almost 85 % of the variance in the sample. A factor clearly associated with the size of the institution explains around 30 % of the variance. To sharpen the interpretation of the smaller factor as a measure of the effect of size, we extend the analysis to a larger set of institutions to eliminate size-dependent selection effects. We also show that eliminating outlying universities makes little difference to the factors. Our inferences are insensitive to the use of raw data, compared with the compressed and scaled indicators used by ARWU. We conclude that around 30 % of the variation in the ARWU indicators can be attributed to variation in size. Clearly, size-related factors cannot be overlooked when using the ranking results. Around 55 % of the variation arises from a component which is uncorrelated with size and which measures the quality of research conducted at the highest levels. The presence of this factor encourages further work to explore its nature and origins.
University rankings widely affect the behaviours of prospective students and their families, university executive leaders, academic faculty, governments and investors in higher education. Yet the social science foundations of global rankings receive little scrutiny. Rankings that simply recycle reputation without any necessary connection to real outputs are of no common value. It is necessary that rankings be soundly based in scientific terms if a virtuous relationship between performance and ranking is to be established, the worst potentials of rankings are to be constrained, and rankings are optimised as a source of comparative information. This article evaluates six ranking systems, Shanghai ARWU, Leiden University, QS, Scopus, Times Higher Education and U-Multirank, according to six social science criteria and two behavioural criteria. The social science criteria are materiality (rankings must be grounded in the observable higher education world), objectivity (opinion surveys should not be used), externality (ranked universities should not be a source of data about themselves), comprehensiveness (rankings should cover the broadest possible range of functions), particularity (ranking systems should eschew multi-indicators with weights, or proxy measures) and ordinal proportionality (vertical distinctions between universities should not be exaggerated). The behavioural criteria are the alignment of the ranking with tendencies to improved performance of all institutions and countries, and transparency, meaning accessibility to strategy making designed to maximize institutional position. The pure research rankings rate well overall but lack comprehensiveness. U-Multirank is also strong under most criteria but stymied by its 100 per cent reliance on subjective data collected via survey.
Ten years after the first global rankings appeared, it is clear that they have had an extraordinary impact on higher education. While there are fundamental questions about whether rankings measure either quality or what's meaningful, they have succeeded in exposing higher education to international comparison. More so, because of the important role higher education plays as a driver of economic development, rankings have exposed both an information deficit and national competitiveness. Accordingly, both nations and institutions have sought to maximise their position vis-á-vis global rankings with positive and perverse effects. Their legacy is evident in the way rankings have become an implicit — and often explicit – reference point for policymaking and higher education decision-making, and have reinforced an evaluative state's over-reliance on quantitative indicators to measure quality. They are embedded in popular discourse, and have informed the behaviour of many stakeholders, within and outside the academy. This paper reflects on three inter-related issues; i) considers the way rankings have heightened policy and investment interest in higher education, ii) discusses whether the modifications to rankings have resolved some of the questions about what they measure, and iii) looks at how rankings have influenced stakeholder behaviour. Finally, the paper reflects on what we have learned and some outstanding issues.
Título de la ponencia: Rankings universitarios: virtudes y defectos
The Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) published by researchers at Shanghai Jiao Tong University has become a major source of information
for university administrators, country officials, students and the public at large. Recent
discoveries regarding its internal dynamics allow the inversion of published ARWU indicator scores to reconstruct raw scores for five hundred world class universities. This
paper explores raw scores in the ARWU and in other contests to contrast the dynamics of rank-driven and score-driven tables, and to explain why the ARWU ranking is a
score-driven procedure. We show that the ARWU indicators constitute sub-scales of a
single factor accounting for research performance, and provide an account of the system of gains and non-linearities used by ARWU. The paper discusses the non-linearities
selected by ARWU, concluding that they are designed to represent the regressive character of indicators measuring research performance. We propose that the utility and
usability of the ARWU could be greatly improved by replacing the unwanted dynamical
effects of the annual re-scaling based on raw scores of the best performers.
Recently there is increasing interest in university rankings. Annual rankings of world universities are published by QS for
the Times Higher Education Supplement, the Shanghai Jiao Tong University, the Higher Education and Accreditation Council of
Taiwan and rankings based on Web visibility by the Cybermetrics Lab at CSIC. In this paper we compare the rankings using a
set of similarity measures. For the rankings that are being published for a number of years we also examine longitudinal patterns.
The rankings limited to European universities are compared to the ranking of the Centre for Science and Technology Studies
at Leiden University. The findings show that there are reasonable similarities between the rankings, even though each applies
a different methodology. The biggest differences are between the rankings provided by the QS-Times Higher Education Supplement
and the Ranking Web of the CSIC Cybermetrics Lab. The highest similarities were observed between the Taiwanese and the Leiden
rankings from European universities. Overall the similarities are increased when the comparison is limited to the European
universities.
This paper analyzes the position of the European universities, in particular the Spanish academic institutions, in the international context. The analysis is based on the only truly international ranking that does not rely on data supplied by the academic institutions themselves or on the results taken from opinion surveys: the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU), yearly carried out by the Shanghai Jiao Tong University Institute of Higher Education. Originally designed to rank universities attending exclusively to their research performance, ARWU is beginning to be used as a stick to measure institutional quality, and is very likely going to play a major role as a key reference in the global higher education arena, given the quality of its reliable data and its solid set of indicators. Our results have provided additional evidence in support of the coherence of the set of indicators and weights used in ARWU. They also confirm the global quality of the university systems of the UK and the USA, only followed closely by the Scandinavian countries, Netherlands and Switzerland. France and Germany, the two largest continental countries, seem to enjoy from the benefits of a glorious past, but seem to be nowadays at some distance from their brilliant history. The Spanish universities show a measurable lag in the quality indicators, but enjoy a reasonable position in total research output. The paper discusses the causes of this lag, and points to possible policies to improve the position of the Spanish university system in the international arena.
En el presente trabajo se hace una revisión del método BIPLOT propuesto por GABRIEL y se propone una nueva forma de representación simultánea para matrices de datos que denominamos HJ-BIPLOT, en la cual las coordenadas para las columnas coinciden con los marcadores para las columnas en el GHT-biplot y las coordenadas para las filas coinciden con los marcadores para las filas en el JKT-biplot de GABRIEL. Estas coordenadas pueden ser representadas en un mismo sistema de referencia: el sistema de los ejes factoriales. Se demuestra que el HJ-biplot consigue la misma bondad de ajuste para filas y para columnas, siendo ésta de un orden muy superior al usual. Se demuestra también que el HJ-biplot, para matrices de datos positivos, da lugar a mejores representaciones β-baricéntricas. The present work reviews the biplot method proposed by GABRIEL and offers a new form of simultaneous representation for data matrices which the authors call the HJ-BIPLOT, in which the coordinates for columns coincide with the markers for the columns in the GHT_BIPLOT and the coordinates for the rows coincide with the markers for the rows in: the JKT_BIPLOT of GABRIEL. These coordinates may be represented in the same reference system; the factorial axis system. It is shown that the HJ-BIPLOT achieves the same goodness of fit for rows and columns and that, this is much better than usual. The results also show that for matrices of positive data the HJ-BIPLOT gives rise to the best B-baricentric plots.
This paper studies the influence of funding on the position reached by the top 300 universities (institutions) of the Quaccarelly Symond World University Ranking 2018. Geographical location, ownership nature (public/private), size and financial resources of these top universities are examined. Our analysis shows that public funding become critical up to 84% of these top universities, especially for the European universities. Moreover, funding explains up to 51% of the variability of the positions attained by the universities in the ranking. The influence of funding in the improvement of the universities’ ranking score is also studied. We provide evidence that the top 100 universities double the funds of the universities located in positions 101–200 and triple those of the universities in positions 201–300 of the ranking. This is an exceptional exercise in relating university funding and excellence that usually are examined for university systems (countries) not for universities themselves.
Global university rankings have become a critical factor in the higher education sector, engendering increasing interest and exerting a notable influence over a wide variety of stakeholders. They are presented to different audiences as tools that evaluate and rank universities according to quality. However, some authors are of the opinion that rankings express reputational factors to a large extent. This article presents a model of the intra- and inter-ranking relationships from the perspective of reputation along with an empirical study on two of the most influential rankings: the Academic Ranking of World Universities and the Times Higher Education World University Rankings. Data from these two rankings between 2010 and 2018, and the application of ordinal regressions, provide evidence that both rankings are mutually influential, generating intra and reciprocal reputational effects over time.
University rankings as developed by the media are used by many stakeholders in higher education: students looking for university places; academics looking for university jobs; university managers who need to maintain standing in the competitive arena of student recruitment; and governments who want to know that public funds spent on universities are delivering a world class higher education system. Media rankings deliberately draw attention to the performance of each university relative to all others, and as such they are undeniably simple to use and interpret. But one danger is that they are potentially open to manipulation and gaming because many of the measures underlying the rankings are under the control of the institutions themselves. This paper examines media rankings (constructed from an amalgamation of variables representing performance across numerous dimensions) to reveal the problems with using a composite index to reflect overall performance. It ends with a proposal for an alternative methodology which leads to groupings rather than point estimates.
Recently, many universities have drawn attention to world university rankings, which reflect the international competition of universities and represent their relative statuses. This study does not radically contradict types of global university rankings but calls for an examination of the effects of their indicators on the final ranking of universities. By using regression analysis, this study investigates the indicator contribution to the ranking of universities in world university ranking systems, including the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU), Times Higher Education (THE), and QS World University Rankings. Results show that in the ARWU system, three indicators regarding faculty members who won Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals and papers published in Nature and Science and in the Science Citation Index and Social Science Citation Index journals predicted the ranking of universities. For the QS and THE systems, the more powerful contributors to the ranking of universities were expert-based reputation indicators.
Ten years have passed since the first global ranking of universities was published. Since then, university rankings have continued to attract the attention of policymakers and theacademy, challenging perceived wisdom about the status and reputation, as wellas quality and performance, of higher education institutions. Their impact andinfluence has impacted and influenced policymakers, students and parents,employers and other stakeholders in addition to higher education institutionsaround the world. They are now a significant factor shaping institutionalambition and reputation, and national priorities. The second edition of Rankings and the Reshaping of HigherEducation, now in paperback, brings the story of rankings up-to-date. It contains new originalresearch, and extensive analysis of the rankings phenomenon. Ellen Hazelkorndraws together a wealth of international experience to chronicle how rankingsare helping reshape higher education in the age of globalization. Written in aneasy but authoritative style, this book makes an important contribution to ourunderstanding of rankings and global changes in higher education. It is essentialreading for policymakers, institutional leaders, managers, advisors, andscholars.
The discrepancies among various global university rankings derive us to compare and correlate their results. Thus, the 2015 results of six major global rankings are collected, compared and analyzed qualitatively and quantitatively using both ranking orders and scores of the top 100 universities. The selected six global rankings include: Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU), Quacquarelli Symonds World University Ranking (QS), Times Higher Education World University Ranking (THE), US News & World Report Best Global University Rankings (USNWR), National Taiwan University Ranking (NTU), and University Ranking by Academic Performance (URAP). Two indexes are used for comparison namely, the number of overlapping universities and Pearson’s/Spearman’s correlation coefficients between each pair of the studied six global rankings. The study is extended to investigate the intra-correlation of ARWU results of the top 100 universities over a 5-year period (2011–2015) as well as investigation of the correlation of ARWU overall score with its single indicators. The ranking results limited to 49 universities appeared in the top 100 in all six rankings are compared and discussed. With a careful analysis of the key performance indicators of these 49 universities one can easily define the common features for a world-class university. The findings indicate that although each ranking system applies a different methodology, there are from a moderate to high correlations among the studied six rankings. To see how the correlation behaves at different levels, the correlations are also conducted for the top 50 and the top 200 universities. The comparison indicates that the degree of correlation and the overlapping universities increase with an increase in the list length. The results of URAP and NTU show the strongest correlation among the studied rankings. Shortly, careful understanding of various ranking methodologies are of utmost importance before analysis, interpretation and usage of ranking results. The findings of the present study could inform policy makers at various levels to develop policies aiming to improve performance and thereby enhance the ranking position.
In roughly a decade, university rankings gained the foreground in the policy arena for higher education and their influence is not going to decrease. However, several methodological shortcomings and warnings about the unintended consequences for national higher education systems have been raised. Against this background, this paper stresses that the individual recipients of information contained in university rankings are currently overlooked. Indeed, university rankings are addressed to a generic recipient, but actually, there are multiple audiences for rankings, and each of these audiences has different needs and each one attributes a different value to information attached to rankings. Referring to a theoretical tool borrowed from bioethics, this paper highlights that the ranking game involves a variety of recipients and that the current setting of the ranking panorama leaves room for gaps to emerge.
This paper uses regression analysis to test if the universities performing less well according to Shanghai Jiao Tong University’s world universities league tables are able to catch up with the top performers, and to identify national and institutional factors that could affect this catching up process. We have constructed a dataset of 461 universities across 41 countries. We found consistent evidence of a moderate degree of catching up, especially amongst non-US universities. Larger universities as well as universities located in English speaking countries not only perform better on average, but also catch up more over 2003–2009. Universities located in lower income countries are also catching up more. The performance of private universities, as compared to that of public universities, varies substantially between the US and the other countries.
This chapter is concerned with the place of teaching and learning in university rankings – both global and national. As a
key component of core university business, teaching and learning should be a key component of any ranking exercise, but this
is mostly not so. For example, of the two principal global university rankings, only the QS Times Higher Education ‘World
University Rankings’ includes an attempt (and a mediocre one at that) to measure aspects of teaching and learning. The ‘Academic
Ranking of World Universities’ compiled by the Shanghai Jiao Tong University Institute of Higher Education (SJTI) group focuses
mainly on research performance. At the national level, the inclusion of indicators of teaching and learning in ranking calculations
are more common, but the focus is still heavily on research indicators.
The aim of this article is to present new ideas in evaluating Shanghai University’s Academic Ranking of World Universities
(ARWU). One issue frequently put forth in various publications is that the Shanghai rankings are sensitive to the relative
weight they attribute to each variable. As a possible remedy to this issue, the statistical I-distance method is proposed
to be used. Based on a sample containing the top 100 ranked universities, the results show a significant correlation with
the official ARWU list. However, some inconsistencies concerning European universities have been noticed and elaborated upon.
The Rankings and their Use in University Governance
- De A García
- M P Fanelli
- Carranza
La evaluación de la calidad académica en debate
- O Barsky
University rankings: A review of methodological flaws
- Ma Fauzi
- M Tan
- Daud
- Mmn Awalludin
Higher Education in Spain
- montané
Rankings nacionales elaborados a partir de múltiples indicadores frente a los de índices sintéticos
- sanz-casado
Rankings universitarios internacionales y conflictos por la regulación de la educación superior
- dávila
The Rankings and their Use in University Governance
- garcía de fanelli