EUA Global University Rankings and Their Impact - Report II

4. Main conclusions - EUA Global University Rankings and Their Impact - Report II
1. There have been significant new developments since the publication of the first EUA Report in 2011, including the emergence of a new venture, the Universitas 21 Rankings of National Higher Education Systems, methodological changes made in a number of existing rankings and importantly a considerable diversification in the types of products offered by several rankings providers.
2. Global university rankings continue to focus principally on the research function of the university and are still not able to do justice to research carried out in the arts, humanities and the social sciences. Moreover, even bibliometric indicators still have strong biases and flaws. The limitations of rankings remain most apparent in efforts to measure teaching performance.
3. A welcome development is that the providers of the most popular global rankings have themselves started to draw attention to the biases and flaws in the data underpinning rankings and thus to the dangers of misusing rankings.
4. New multi-indicator tools for profiling, classifying or benchmarking higher education institutions offered by the rankings providers are proliferating. These increase the pressure on and the risk of overburdening universities, obliged to collect ever more data in order to maintain as high a profile as possible. The growing volume of information being gathered on universities, and the new “products” on offer also strengthen both the influence of the ranking providers and their potential impact.
5. Rankings are beginning to impact on public policy making as demonstrated by their influence in the development of immigration policies in some countries, in determining the choice of university partner institutions, or in which cases foreign qualifications are recognised. The attention paid to rankings is also reflected in discussions on university mergers in some countries.
6. A growing number of universities have started to use data compiled from rankings for the purpose of benchmarking exercises that in turn feed into institutional strategic planning.
7. Rankings are here to stay. Even if academics are aware that the results of rankings are biased and cannot satisfactorily measure institutional quality, on a more pragmatic level they also recognise that an impressive position in the rankings can be a key factor in securing additional resources, recruiting more students and attracting strong partner institutions. Therefore those universities not represented in global rankings are tempted to calculate their likely scores in order to assess their chances of entering the rankings; everyone should bear in mind that not all publication output consists of articles in journals, and many issues relevant to academic quality cannot be measured quantitatively at all...
PART II: Methodological changes and new developments in rankings since 2011
EUA’s 2011 Report analysed the major global rankings in existence at that time. The report covered the most popular university rankings, in particular: SRC ARWU and THE and QS rankings, rankings focused solely on research such as the Taiwanese HEEACT (since 2012 NTU Ranking) and the CWTS Leiden Ranking. Reference was also made to the outcomes of the EU Working Group on Assessment of University-Based Research (AUBR) which focused on the methodologies of research evaluation rather than on rankings and to the development of multi-indicator resources such as the EU-supported U-Map and U-Multirank, and the OECD AHELO feasibility study on student learning outcomes. This part of the present report covers both new developments in the global university rankings dealt with in the 2011 Report, and the methodologies of some rankings not covered in 2011 in further detail.
1. The SRC ARWU rankings
ARWU Ranking Lab and Global Research University Profiles (GRUP)
Macedonian University Rankings 29 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 46 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. Download EUA Global University Rankings and Their Impact - Report II.