How Universities are Ranked - The Criterions

University rankings in the past few years have become an integral part of academic life. They offer a number of different things to different people Students, parents, staff, faculty and other stakeholders evaluate the quality of different universities through these rankings.

They provide a competitive edge between universities which did not exist previously. Universities prefer these rankings as a marketing tool to judge their performance and build international reputation accordingly. Rankings in the form of ‘league tables’ is one of the most common and easiest methods to assess a university’s performance. These rankings have great influence but still, there is a controversial issue over the methodologies used in ranking lists.

There are major differences in the ranking methodologies which includes definitions of what constitutes quality, the measurement procedures and indicators involved in measurement procedures and presentation layout. The ranking results differ on the basis of various ranking approaches.

League tables are of extreme importance in university ranking, media rankings are designed according to it. Higher ranks refer to higher repute, lower ranks refer lower quality. Once you have defined the quality criteria and indicators to rank the university, an overall score of each indicator is calculated and given particular weight.  For instance, in the case of research impact, specific indicators like the total number of citations per faculty in the Thompson Scientific Database will be applied and will be provided an equal weight of 20 percent. Then the weight is applied equally to all universities.

All the ranking lists around the globe use different definitions of quality indicators and criteria to measure the quality and weight for all indicators which show ranking results in a different light. It is very difficult to justify ranking results rationally.  For instance, there is a major difference if Shanghai ranking uses the number of Nobel Prize-winning alumni as an education quality indicator and follows the student/faculty ratio as the Times Higher Education (THE) ranking does. The result will not match and the research/education indicator will get a weight of 20% (as the THES ranking list does) or 40% (as the Shanghai ranking list does).

The quality and measurements are defined by ranking list organizers. The media ranking is done by the media department itself. Although it is often questioned why a particular indicator was chosen or defined, who founded it, and how reflective the decision process is; still these ranking lists have a great impact when we measure a university’s repute. 

The Shanghai ranking list follows objective data for quantitative measurement whereas THS ranking follows subjective evaluation. Questions related to their validity are unanswered. The subjective criteria for quality are applied to all universities and results are highlighted through league tables.  

It is important to keep in mind that for measuring the repute of a university, the ranking approaches certain basic principles. It is important that ranking should be done on individual disciplines or department instead of institutions.  ‘University Quality’ should refer to the variety of academic institutions, missions, and goals, language and culture specification. Instead of league tables, a separate measurement and presentation for a single indicator have to be presented individually. It is important that university ranking should be defined in specific areas related to teaching, research continuous education and other specific disciplines.