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An article by Duncan Ross in  Times Higher Education  (THE) suggests that the World University Rankings are due for repair and maintenance. He notes that these rankings were originally aimed at a select group of research orientated world class universities but THE is now looking at a much larger group that is likely to be less internationally orientated, less research based and more concerned with teaching. He says that it is unlikely that there will be major changes in the methodology for the 2019-20 rankings next year but after that there may be significant adjustment. There is a chance that  the industry income indicator, income from industry and commerce divided by the number of faculty, will be changed. This is an indirect attempt to capture innovation and is unreliable since it is based entirely on data submitted by institutions. Alex Usher of Higher Education Strategy Associates has pointed out some problems with this indicator. Ross seems most concerned,  h...

The number of indicators used in international university rankings varies a lot. At one extreme we have the Russian Round University Rankings (RUR), which have 20 indicators. At the other, Nature Index and Reuters Top 100 Innovative Universities have just one. In general, the more information provided by rankings the more helpful they are. If, however, the indicators produce very similar results then their value will be limited. The research and postgraduate teaching surveys in the THE world rankings and the RUR correlate so highly that they are in effect measuring the same thing. There is probably an optimum number of indicators for a ranking, perhaps higher for general than for  research-only rankings, above which no further information is provided.  A paper by Guleda Dogan  of Hacettepe University, Ankara, looks at the indicators in three university rankings the Shanghai Academic Ranking of World Universities, the National Taiwan University Rankings and University Rank...

The big hole in current international university rankings is the absence of anything that effectively measures the quality of graduates. Some rankings use staff student ratio or income as a proxy for the provision of resources, on the assumption that the more money that is spent or the more teachers deployed then the better the quality of teaching. QS has an employer survey that asks about the universities from where employers like to recruit but that has many problems. There is a lot of of evidence that university graduates are valued to a large extent because they are seen as intelligent, conscientious and, depending on place and field, open-minded or conformist. A metric that correlates with these attributes would be helpful in assessing and comparing universities.  A recent article in The Conversation by Jonathon Wai suggests that the US News America's Best Colleges rankings are highly regarded partly because they measure the academic ability of admitted students, which cor...

Ulster University seems to have retracted the claim on its website that it is in the top 3% of universities in the world. Elsewhere it has apparently claimed to be in the top 2%. According to the Belfast Telegraph "Ulster University stated that it 'is in the top 3% of universities in the world' when it came 501-600th in the 1,103 Times Higher Education World University Rankings in 2018, putting them in the mid-tier of those rankings," a Which? spokesperson said. "Further, in a website document "Ulster's 50 Facts Worth Knowing" Ulster University included the claim 'Top 2% of universities in the world (QS World Rankings)'." The spokesman continued: "Which? University is particularly concerned about these comparative claims, given it is less than one year since the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) issued its comprehensive advice in November 2017 to universities about such claims and its rulings which upheld complaints about compa...