The article focuses on America’s Best Colleges, published by US News, and the indicators that use scores in the SAT or ACT, standardised tests taken by applicants to most American colleges. More...

Alex Hayman, Managing Director of Which?University, has published an article in wonkHE about UK universities misusing the results of rankings in their advertising. He refers to six cases: Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, Aston University, the University of Aberdeen, Newcastle University, Ulster University, and the University of the West of Scotland.The universities have responded differently. More...

There have been no dramatic changes in the overall Times Higher Education (THE) World University but there are some newcomers and some less well-known universities such as Babol Noshirvani University of Technology and the University of Reykjavik have done remarkably well in the citations indicator. In addition, Chinese universities have continued to improve, and Tsinghua University is now the top institution in Asia. Meanwhile the merger of French universities into larger entities is bearing fruit, with Paris Sciences et Lettres and Sorbonne University doing very well. More...

The SCImago Journal and Country Rank is produced by the SCImago Lab, which is a research group attached to Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC), University of Granada, Extremadura, Carlos III (Madrid) and Alcalá de Henares. More...

The South African media have expressed concern over the continuing poor performance of local universities in international university rankings. More...

Washington Monthly’s College Guide and Rankings provides an alternative approach to the ranking of American institutions of higher education. The magazine ranks four-year schools based on their contribution to society, which is assessed by three criteria: social mobility, research and service. More...

Recently there has been growing interest in measuring and comparing the social contribution of universities. The new Russian Three Missions University Rankings includes a group of metrics entitled University and Society and the Universitas Indonesia Greenmetric ranking covers contributions to environmental sustainability. More...

The America’s Best Colleges ranking, published by US News, has for many years been a standard reference for prospective students, administrators and stakeholders. It has, however, sometimes been criticised for methodological shortcomings. The reliance on peer assessment might encourage a bias towards richer private universities and it has been claimed that using standardised test scores as an indicator results in privileging those students who can afford expensive coaching. More...

The Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education was first published in 1973 and provides a framework for analysing the US higher education system. At present, the system classifies institutions that are accredited and award degrees. The main categories are Doctorate-granting Universities, with three levels of research activity, Master’s Colleges and Universities, grouped according to the number of master’s degrees awarded, Baccalaureate Colleges, Associates Colleges, Special Focus Institutions and Tribal Colleges. More...