A new report entitled “Global university rankings and their impact II” was published by EUA and launched in a special session during the EUA Annual Conference, on 12 April.
PART II: Methodological changes and new developments in rankings since 2011
1. The SRC ARWU rankings
SRC ARWU World University Ranking (SRC ARWU) is the most consolidated of the popular university-based global rankings. There have been no changes in the core methodology of this ranking since 2010.
2. National Taiwan University Ranking: performance ranking of scientific papers for world universities
The NTU Ranking aims to be a ranking of scientific papers, i.e. it deliberately uses publication and citation indicators only; therefore, data is reliable. However as no field normalisation is used the results are skewed towards the life sciences and the natural sciences. The original ranking strongly favours large universities. The “reference ranking” option changes indicators to relative ones but only shows the overall score, not the scores per academic staff member for individual indicators.
3. Times Higher Education
THE descriptions of methodology customarily refer solely to the methodological tools used, without always providing enough information about how the scores are actually calculated from raw data (Berlin Principle 6). Overall there were several – albeit discreet – changes in methodology in the THE World University Ranking in 2010 and 2011, but with nothing further since then. Most of them represent improvements, such as the slight decrease (from 34.5% to 33%) in the total weight of reputation indicators which thus account for one third of the overall score. The reputation indicators in THE World University Ranking and the 2012 THE Reputation Survey are discussed in more detail in the next section.
4. Thomson Reuters’ Global Institutional Profiles Project
The Thomson Reuters Global Institutional Profiles Project (GPP) is a Thomson Reuters’ copyright. The aim of Thomson Reuters is to create portraits of globally significant institutions in terms of their reputation, scholarly outputs, funding levels, academic staff characteristics and other information, in one comprehensive database (Thomson Reuters, 2012a). GPP is not a ranking as such; however one of the parameters used is the ranking position of institutions. These ranking positions are taken from THE rankings.
5. Quacqarelli-Symmonds rankings
Comparisons between universities (QS, 2012f ) on a subject basis can be much more useful for them than global university league tables that try to encapsulate entire institutions in a single score. Furthermore comparisons made within a single subject lessen the field bias caused by different publishing cultures and citation practices within different fields of research. In 2012 the QS subject rankings covered 29 of the 52 subject areas defined. These rankings are strongly based on reputation surveys. The methodology used is not sufficiently transparent for users to repeat the calculations and various mathematical adjustments are made before the final score is reached. In relation to the academic reputation survey QS admits that a university may occasionally be nominated as excellent and ranked in a subject in which it “neither operates programmes nor research” (QS, 2011b, p.11). In an attempt to address this, QS specifies thresholds and conducts a final screening to ensure that listed institutions are, indeed, active in the subject concerned. This demonstrates that academics risk nominating universities on the basis of their previous reputation or reputation in other areas, rather than based on their own real knowledge of the institution. While the measures taken may help to eliminate inappropriate choices, they prevent academics from sometimes nominating universities which have programmes, but no capacity or strength in a given subject.
6. CWTS Leiden Ranking
Identification of the bias in MNCS indicators given their unusual sensitivity to publications with extremely high citation levels, and the introduction of indicator stability intervals to detect high citation scores possibly resulting from such publications (rather than citations covering a university’s entire publications output) are both positive developments. Yet they are also a warning that new indicators always introduce fresh biases, so that rankings are constantly liable to distortion. Only time will tell whether the new indicator – the proportion of top 10% publications (PPtop 10%) – which currently seems the most reliable will be the best in the long term or will create fresh problems. However, the inclusion of full counting and proportional counting methods does enable users to select further options as they see fit.
7. Webometrics Ranking of World Universities
The increased coverage of Webometrics to include over 20,000 higher education institutions allows nearly all higher education institutions worldwide to compare themselves with others. Apart from the addition of the “excellence” indicator based on SCImago bibliometric data, all other indicators used by Webometrics are based on web analysis, and considerably less direct proxies than the indicators used by academic rankings. Webometrics’ continued focus thus remains on providing a rough indication of how an institution performs compared to others.
8. U-Map
According to the report on U-Map in Estonia (Kaiser et al., 2011), the resulting U-Map profiles largely match the expectations of higher education institutions and the Ministry of Education, while the most interesting differences and diversity are observable in the “knowledge exchange” and “international orientation” profiles. However, the country concedes that, because U-Map is designed as a European transparency tool, it is not fully compatible with all national institutional needs. Both Estonia and Portugal acknowledge that it has raised awareness among institutions of their own profile.
9. U-Multirank
If U-Multirank meets its objectives, based upon the experience with the feasibility study, and given that the intention is to integrate the already tested U-Map classification tool, it will be substantially different from existing global rankings. The implementation phase was launched in January 2013 with the financial support of the European Commission and the first rankings are expected for early 2014.
10. U21 Rankings of National Higher Education Systems
While the development of a systems’ level ranking is an interesting new approach, as indicated in Part I there are many open questions. For example, as the weights of the indicators in the overall ranking have not been provided, it is very hard to determine which indicators have the greatest and least impact on the overall score, as the description of indicator weights is also confusing. The required calculations have been performed and the weight of each indicator added in the course of preparing the present report. While it has been assumed that the two “connectivity” indicators are equal in weight, nothing is said about them either in the overall report (Williams et al., 2012) or on the U21 website.
11. SCImago Rankings
Tools offered by SCImago are useful and available free of charge. One key feature of SCImago is that it covers more than 3 000 institutions thus allowing a large group of institutions to compare themselves with others. Users will nevertheless have to take into account that SCImago does not distinguish between universities and other research organisations. SCImago tools make it possible to compare institutions or countries: in total, by 27 subject areas and numerous narrower subject categories, by countries or regions. Journal rankings are important in the choice of a journal for publication. SCImago also has its limitations, for example only bibliometric data is used. Hence most indicators are absolute numbers which means that it favours large institutions.
12. University Ranking by Academic Performance
The greater inclusiveness of URAP compared to the most popular global university rankings is of interest. Its results should be reliable because its content is drawn solely from international bibliometric databases. At the same time, and despite the words “academic performance” in its name, URAP uses indicators concerned exclusively with research. No indicators related to teaching are included; therefore once more the focus is on research-oriented institutions. Furthermore its six ranking indicators are absolute values and therefore size-dependant. As a result, URAP is strongly biased towards large universities.
13. EUMIDA
The development of EUMIDA corresponds to the growing need for policy makers to have more extensive Europe-wide, comparable data collection. EUMIDA can therefore be seen as a positive development. In principle, the aggregation of results into an index is a ranking.
14. AHELO
EUA has been closely involved in monitoring the progress of this feasibility study, along with its partner associations in the US and Canada. The joint concerns of the three associations were raised in a letter sent to the OECD in July 2012 on behalf of the university communities in all three regions.
15. IREG ranking audit
The success of audits will no doubt greatly depend on the qualifications of audit team members and their willingness to explore ranking methodologies in depth, as well as their ability to access the websites of the ranking organisations and specifically details of the methodology applied. Experience to date, as explained in the first EUA Report, has shown that frequent gaps in the published methodologies exist, and most notably the explanation of how indicator values are calculated from the raw data. As a result, those wishing to repeat the calculation to verify the published result in the ranking table have been unable to do so. There are also cases in which the methodological content posted in more than one section of the ranking provider’s website is not consistent. While such variations are usually attributable to content relevant to ranking tables in different years, the precise years concerned are not clearly specified. Other rankings refer to the “normalisation” of data but without stating what kind of “normalisation” is meant. The term could thus denote many different things, ranging from the field normalisation of bibliometric indicators to the “normalisation” of indicators to make them relative rather than size-dependent, or to “normalisation” involving the division of a university’s result by that of the “best” university to make the former “dimensionless”. It is to be hoped that the IREG audit will be thorough, and also take these concerns into account and lead to substantial improvements in ranking methodologies and the quality of the information provided. More will only be known on how this works in practice when the first audit results are available.
SEE PART II: Methodological changes and new developments in rankings since 2011
1. The SRC ARWU rankings
ARWU Ranking Lab and Global Research University Profiles (GRUP)
Macedonian University Rankings
Greater China Ranking
2. National Taiwan University Ranking: performance ranking of scientific papers for world universities
3. Times Higher Education
Times Higher Education World University Ranking
THE academic reputation surveys and THE World Reputation Ranking
THE 100 under 50 ranking
4. Thomson Reuters’ Global Institutional Profiles Project
5. Quacqarelli-Symmonds rankings
QS World University Ranking
Additional league table information
The QS classification
QS Stars
QS World University Rankings by subject
QS Best Student Cities Ranking
QS top-50-under-50 Ranking
6. CWTS Leiden Ranking
7. Webometrics Ranking of World Universities
8. U-Map
9. U-Multirank
10. U21 Rankings of National Higher Education Systems
11. SCImago Rankings
SCImago Institutional Rankings
Other SCImago rankings and visualisations
12. University Ranking by Academic Performance
13. EUMIDA
14. AHELO
15. IREG ranking audit.

Around 450 university leaders and higher education representatives gathered at Ghent University last week (11-12 April) for the 2013 EUA Annual Conference entitled “European Universities - Global Engagement”.
Discussions throughout the conference confirmed that internationalisation is an issue which affects all elements of the university mission, which is why the development of strategic approaches has become a necessity for all European universities. Therefore, internationalisation will continue to be an integral part of EUA’s membership activities in the years to come.
To feed into the conference discussions, EUA published the results of a survey of its member universities on HE internationalisation, which also gauged their expectations for EUA’s future international activities and for the European Union’s forthcoming strategy for the internationalisation of higher education, which is due to be presented in the coming months. This strategy will focus in particular on European higher education engagement beyond European borders, with global partners.
The first session focused on “New models of internationalisation: European policies, national priorities and institutional strategies” and European Commissioner Androulla Vassiliou was invited to present a European perspective on the topic.
She highlighted the need to be prepared to take on educational challenges that go beyond national borders (such as changes in the labour market). The Commissioner added that universities needed broader strategies that go beyond mobility and cover many other types of academic cooperation, such as joint degrees, support for capacity-building, joint research projects and distance learning programmes. The concept of "internationalisation at home" continued to be key to ensuring that the majority of students who are not in a position to study abroad can nevertheless enjoy the benefits associated with international exposure.
Institutional perspectives were then provided by Ihron Rensburg, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Johannesburg, South Africa, and Luc Soete, Rector of Maastricht University in the Netherlands. The former provided a view of higher education growth in Africa and a snapshot of what internationalisation means in particular to South Africa before concluding with a series of reflections on the necessity to engage in mutually beneficial higher education partnerships which value the perspectives and the contributions of all actors, whether they be big or small, or from the North or South. Luc Soete, meanwhile, addressed the multifaceted nature of the globalisation of higher education and research, focusing in particular on the importance of tackling global research challenges and the enormous impact of communications and technological developments.
The working groups on the second day were an opportunity for HE representatives to discuss in more depth how they were implementing institutional internationalisation strategies and positioning themselves in the global research landscape. Contributions and case studies were provided by a variety of European university leaders, including the Rector of Ghent University Paul van Cauwenberge.
In the final plenary which focused on responses to international competition, the audience was provided with an overview of the Monash Warwick Alliance launched in 2012 by the University of Warwick (UK) and Monash University (Australia). Its Director Andrew Coats described the development of this collaboration, its aims over the next years and the potential risks and challenges. He was followed by Thomas Schöck, Chancellor of Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU), who presented the university’s internationalisation strategy (including the FAU Busan campus in Seoul) in the context of more general internationalisation developments in Bavaria and in Germany.
The last session of the conference was dedicated to the launch presentation and discussion on EUA’s new report on global university rankings and their impact. The results of the second EUA report on this topic were provided by author Andrejs Rauhvargers, whose presentation was followed by a discussion with participants on a wide range of issues relating to the methodologies, impact and institutional responses to rankings. Presentations from the conference are available on the conference website.
EUA is also pleased to announce that next year’s Annual Conference will take place at the Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB), Belgium, from 3 to 4 April 2014.

Around 450 university leaders and higher education representatives gathered at Ghent University last week (11-12 April) for the 2013 EUA Annual Conference entitled “European Universities - Global Engagement”.
Discussions throughout the conference confirmed that internationalisation is an issue which affects all elements of the university mission, which is why the development of strategic approaches has become a necessity for all European universities. Therefore, internationalisation will continue to be an integral part of EUA’s membership activities in the years to come.
To feed into the conference discussions, EUA published the results of a survey of its member universities on HE internationalisation, which also gauged their expectations for EUA’s future international activities and for the European Union’s forthcoming strategy for the internationalisation of higher education, which is due to be presented in the coming months. This strategy will focus in particular on European higher education engagement beyond European borders, with global partners.
The first session focused on “New models of internationalisation: European policies, national priorities and institutional strategies” and European Commissioner Androulla Vassiliou was invited to present a European perspective on the topic.
She highlighted the need to be prepared to take on educational challenges that go beyond national borders (such as changes in the labour market). The Commissioner added that universities needed broader strategies that go beyond mobility and cover many other types of academic cooperation, such as joint degrees, support for capacity-building, joint research projects and distance learning programmes. The concept of "internationalisation at home" continued to be key to ensuring that the majority of students who are not in a position to study abroad can nevertheless enjoy the benefits associated with international exposure.
Institutional perspectives were then provided by Ihron Rensburg, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Johannesburg, South Africa, and Luc Soete, Rector of Maastricht University in the Netherlands. The former provided a view of higher education growth in Africa and a snapshot of what internationalisation means in particular to South Africa before concluding with a series of reflections on the necessity to engage in mutually beneficial higher education partnerships which value the perspectives and the contributions of all actors, whether they be big or small, or from the North or South. Luc Soete, meanwhile, addressed the multifaceted nature of the globalisation of higher education and research, focusing in particular on the importance of tackling global research challenges and the enormous impact of communications and technological developments.
The working groups on the second day were an opportunity for HE representatives to discuss in more depth how they were implementing institutional internationalisation strategies and positioning themselves in the global research landscape. Contributions and case studies were provided by a variety of European university leaders, including the Rector of Ghent University Paul van Cauwenberge.
In the final plenary which focused on responses to international competition, the audience was provided with an overview of the Monash Warwick Alliance launched in 2012 by the University of Warwick (UK) and Monash University (Australia). Its Director Andrew Coats described the development of this collaboration, its aims over the next years and the potential risks and challenges. He was followed by Thomas Schöck, Chancellor of Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU), who presented the university’s internationalisation strategy (including the FAU Busan campus in Seoul) in the context of more general internationalisation developments in Bavaria and in Germany.
The last session of the conference was dedicated to the launch presentation and discussion on EUA’s new report on global university rankings and their impact. The results of the second EUA report on this topic were provided by author Andrejs Rauhvargers, whose presentation was followed by a discussion with participants on a wide range of issues relating to the methodologies, impact and institutional responses to rankings. Presentations from the conference are available on the conference website.
EUA is also pleased to announce that next year’s Annual Conference will take place at the Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB), Belgium, from 3 to 4 April 2014.

A new report entitled “Global university rankings and their impact II” was published by EUA and launched in a special session during the EUA Annual Conference, on 12 April.
Authored by Andrejs Rauhvargers, the report underlines that there have been significant new developments in the field of international rankings since EUA’s first rankings review report, in 2011. It reveals that the number of international university rankings and other “transparency tools” continues to grow, with the arrival of new rankings and the development of new products by ranking providers. The growing volume of information that is being gathered on universities and the new “products” on offer also strengthen both the influence of the ranking providers and the potential impact of rankings.
The report shows that rankings are also impacting on public policy making. The developments outlined in the report also indicate the need for all stakeholders to reflect on the extent to which global rankings are no longer a concern only for a small number of elite institutions but have become a reality for a much broader spectrum of universities as they seek to be included in, or improve their position in one or the other rankings.
Discussions that followed the presentation also underlined the continued lack of indicators for addressing teaching quality in an appropriate way, and concluded on the difficulty of conceiving a totally objective ranking. Nevertheless, it was noticed that some rankings providers have themselves started to draw attention to the biases and flaws in the data underpinning rankings, and thus to the dangers of misusing rankings. EUA will now take this work on rankings forward with its new pan-European project (RISP) designed to study the impact of rankings on institutional strategies in more detail and to provide recommendations on how rankings can promote institutional development while also identifying potential pitfalls that universities should avoid. The Global University Rankings and Their Impact Report II is available here.
The EUA Rankings Review project was made possible by funding from the Robert Bosch Stiftung and the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation.

In the autumn of 2012, EUA launched the project “Promoting quality culture in higher education institutions” (PQC), in partnership with the European Association for Quality Assurance in Higher Education (ENQA), the University of Duisburg-Essen, the University of Lisbon and the University of Zagreb.
The project aims to provide capacity-building to quality managers at universities on how to build quality cultures, and to staff of quality assurance agencies on how they can support institutions in this process. The first in a series of three trainings for quality managers was held at the University of Lisbon from 8 to 10 April 2013. The training gathered 20 representatives of EUA member universities in charge of quality processes at their institution, whether at leadership or managerial level.
Through plenary sessions and group work, the participants explored questions such as: How to build effective communication structures for engaging staff and students in quality culture? How to use staff development as a means for enhancing quality? How to connect QA to the decision-making processes at all levels? How to avoid hindering creativity at the university through bureaucratic QA processes?
Two more trainings will take place in the framework of the PQC project in May and June. The participants have been selected through a Call for Participation earlier this year. For more information about the project, please visit the project website.

Blog Educpros de Pierre Dubois. « Entrez dans la réalité! 115 DUT dans toute la France proposent 658 DUT et 852 licences professionnelles » (portail des IUT). L’association des directeurs et celle des présidents d’IUT font feu de tout bois pour préserver l’identité, la spécificité, l’autonomie financière, le succès historique des IUT, et pour faire reconnaître un nouveau diplôme, la licence technologique. Les IUT déminent le terrain, font exploser les mensonges. « Les IUT sont tout sauf vides » (entretien de Jean-François Mazoin, président de l’ADIUT, avec Olivier Rollot, 15 mars 2013). « Les chiffres utilisés pour donner les places vacantes proviennent d’admission postbac et sont mal interprétés… Le phénomène de places vacantes est largement sur dimensionné alors que la plupart des IUT sont pleins. Parfois avec plus de 20 – jusqu’à 43! – candidats pour une seule place! »
En mars 2013, l’ADIUT mène une campagne d’information et de débat dans 7 IUT (powerpoint de 29 pages). Suite de l'article...

Education systems around the world are increasingly focussing on the evaluation of students, teachers and schools as part of their drive to help students do better and improve results. Rising demand for quality school education and a trend towards greater school autonomy in some countries are among the factors behind this new focus, according to a new OECD report.
Synergies for Better Learning: An International Perspective on Evaluation and Assessment reveals striking differences across OECD countries in both whether and how the performance of students, teachers, school leaders, schools and the education system is assessed, and offers advice on how to use evaluation and feedback to help students, teachers and school leaders.
In primary education, for example, students are not awarded marks in Denmark, Iceland, New Zealand, Norway and Sweden whereas Hungary, Italy, Mexico, the Netherlands, Poland and the Slovak Republic rely primarily on numerical marks for formal reporting.
In Australia, Chile, Korea, Portugal and the United Kingdom, teachers undergo formal appraisal processes as part of their performance management while in Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden, feedback on teacher performance is provided more informally in schools.
Launching the report in Oslo, Norway, Andreas Schleicher, Advisor to the Secretary-General of the OECD on Education Policy and Deputy Director for Education and Skills, said: “At a time when schools need to assume more responsibility for managing their affairs and embrace more diverse student populations, building effective systems for evaluation and assessment has become absolutely critical for helping students to learn better, teachers to teach better, and schools to work more effectively.
Key recommendations of the report, one of the largest international studies of educational evaluation ever conducted, include:
    * Place students at the centre: Students should be fully engaged with their learning and empowered to assess their own progress. The development of critical thinking and social competencies should also be monitored.
    * Take a comprehensive approach: All the components of assessment and evaluation – student assessment, teacher appraisal, school evaluation, school leader appraisal and education system evaluation - should form a coherent whole. This will generate synergies, avoid duplication and prevent inconsistency of objectives.
    * Align evaluation and assessment with educational goals: Evaluation and assessment should align with the principles embedded in educational goals.
    * Focus on improving classroom practices: To optimise the potential of evaluation and assessment to improve what is at the heart of education – student learning – policy makers should promote the regular use of evaluation and assessment results for improvements in the classroom.
    * Carefully conceive the high-stakes uses of evaluation and assessment results. The use of evaluation and assessment results should avoid distortions in the education process such as teaching-to-the-test and narrowing of the curriculum.
    * Build consensus: Ensure that all the stakeholders are involved early and understand the benefits.
Read the Summary of Synergies for Better Learning: An International Perspective on Evaluation and Assessment.
For comment or further information, journalists should contact Paulo Santiago of the OECD’s Directorate for Education and Skills.
A companion series – OECD Reviews of Evaluation and Assessment in Education – offers an in-depth analysis of evaluation and assessment policies in each of the 14 countries which opted for an in-depth review by an OECD team: Australia, Belgium (Flemish Community), Chile (to be published), the Czech Republic, Denmark, Luxembourg, Mexico, the Netherlands (to be published), New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, the Slovak Republic (to be published), Sweden and the United Kingdom (Northern Ireland) (to be published).These are available at www.oecd.org/edu/evaluationpolicy.

Blog Educpros de Pierre Dubois. La Fédération des villes moyennes (FVM) se fâche (communiqué du 17 avril 2013, manifeste). Elle interpelle le gouvernement et les parlementaires sur la réforme de l’enseignement supérieur et la recherche.
Dans un mois, le débat sur le projet de loi Fioraso devrait commencer au Parlement. La Ministre aurait dû avoir le courage de retirer son projet néfaste pour la France. Poussée par ses trop nombreux conseillers, elle n’osera pas! Le débat s’engagera dans de mauvaises conditions et sans aucun soutien, à part celui des opportunistes de tous bords et de l’UNEF, qui aura réussi à préserver des acquis d’un autre temps: pas de sélection à l’entrée de l’université, pas de sélection à l’entrée de la 1ère année de master, maintien de droits d’inscription peu élevés, modalités de contrôle des connaissances laxistes et qui conduisent pourtant à des taux d’échec élevés en licence. La Ministre flatte à ce point l’UNEF qu’elle a assisté aujourd’hui à son 83ème congrès national.
La réforme Fioraso, partisane du regroupement des établissements d’enseignement supérieur dans n’importe quelle condition mais pour faire de ceux-ci des mastodontes ingouvernables, oublie le premier cycle, l’agonie de la licence universitaire, l’illisibilité des formations post-bac, éclatées en classes préparatoires et sections de techniciens supérieurs dans les lycées, en IUT et licences dans les universités.
La Ministre est de plus coupable de ne pas publier le dernier état des lieux des formations supérieures dans chaque académie: l’Atlas régional des effectifs étudiants en 2011-2012 n’est pas encore publié à ce jour. Un tel retard est une première dans la statistique publique depuis plus de 10 ans. La Ministre ne fournit même pas les données statistiques pour débattre, pour éclairer les parlementaires! Suite de l'article...

Un salarié sur cinq travaille dans la fonction publique. Les métiers sont aussi divers que dans le privé, avec la garantie de l'emploi en plus. Conséquence: les concours sont pris d'assaut. Raison de plus pour s'y préparer avec soin.
Un salarié sur cinq travaille dans la fonction publique. Les métiers sont aussi divers que dans le privé, avec bien sûr l'avantage de la garantie de l'emploi. Ce qui explique le succès des concours, littéralement pris d'assaut. Quels sont les postes qui vous concernent? Comment s'y inscrire, une fois la filière choisie? Comment s'y préparer?
Trois catégories. La quasi-totalité des postes de la fonction publique ne sont accessibles que par concours. Ils se répartissent en trois catégories:
- les concours de catégorie A: ouverts aux bac +3 (et bac +4 pour la fonction publique européenne);
- les concours de catégorie B: ouverts aux bacheliers (au minimum);
- les concours de catégorie C: ouverts aux non diplômés ou aux détenteurs d'un diplôme professionnel (CAP, BEP). Suite de l'article...