Universities have been ranked according to established methodologies for over a quarter of a century (the first such rankings were presented in the US News & World Report I 1983). The past few years have witnessed increased activity in the field. Hundreds of research papers have been printed, PhD theses defended, and prestigious international conferences held on the topic. Unfortunately, Ukrainian academia, university lecturers and administrators, often have no or limited knowledge about world university rankings. These people should know the academic ranking procedures like the back of their hand in order to help make the Ukrainian higher educational institutions more competitive.
More often than not, they fail to comprehend the difference between these academic rankings and their criteria, what kind of data is used to generate them, and the grounds on which a given university is given this or that ranking. This leads to the frequent emergence of myths, for example ones about Ukrainian universities without rankings.
The Chinese sage Laotzu said that a journey of a thousand li starts with a single step. We will broach the subject of international university rankings by taking a closer look at the two of the currently most prestigious rankings, namely the Shanghai-based Jiao-Tong University ARWU and Times Higher Education-QS (THE-QS) World University Rankings.
ARWU
The Academic Ranking of World Universities (AWRU) is compiled by the Shanghai Jiao Tong University, and has been published every year since 2003. The initial objective was to assess the degree to which the Chinese universities were lagging behind their counterparts elsewhere in the world. Following its first publication the AWRU has received a great deal of praise and has since been regarded as one of the most prestigious publications in the field.
From the outset, the emphasis was on research in science and engineering, reflecting the fact that this was precisely where China wanted to assert its position. The methodology is based on easily accessible data sources, including the number of winners of various prizes, and the amount of pertinent publications, notably measured by the Science Citation and Social Sciences Citation Indexes.
The AWRU ranks institutions with Fields- and Nobel-Prize recipients (both as students and faculty), as well as faculty members’ names found in the Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE) and the Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI).
Relying on the abovementioned criteria, ARWU came up with a list of over a thousand universities, with the Top 500 list shown on its Web site. It also has regional rankings of the Top 100 universities in the Americas, Europe, and Asia.
Not a single Ukrainian university is mentioned. There are two Russian universities (Lomonosov University of Moscow, ranked 77th on the 2009 list, and St. Petersburg State University, found in the four-hundreds).
ARWU is criticized for its bias towards the natural science, the excessive emphasis on research activities, and rigid criteria (about 50 persons have been mentioned as winners of the Fields Medal [popularly regarded as a Nobel Prize in Mathematics], and there are less then 600 Nobel laureates). However, the ARWU remains respected as a world university ranking, with clear-cut objectives, adequate and transparent ranking procedures, and easily accessible findings.
TIMES HIGHER EDUCATION-QS WORLD UNIVERSITY RANKINGS
The famous THE-QS World University Ranking was published by Times Higher Education and Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) between 2004 and 2009.
According to the creators, the project was aimed at treating universities as multifaceted organizations and assessing their performance on a global scale, singling out the world-class ones. They defend this approach by the demands of the modern times: globalization requires the businesspeople to hire true experts in a given field, which, in turn, requires universities to produce such experts, and to provide legitimacy in the world-market for scientific development. That was precisely the reason for THE-QS project: to identify world-class universities.
THE-QS rankings include four world-class-university criteria regarded by the originators as the supporting pillars: the quality of research, the graduate’s competitive status, international recognition, and academic performance. These rankings are mostly determined by expert members of the academic community and employers.
Times Higher Education-QS has several variants: a list of top 200 universities, universities by orientation (natural, life, and social sciences, engineering and IT, and medicine), regional rankings (e.g., the best universities of Britain, Northern Ireland, Europe), and rankings based on scholarly comments, research citation index, employers’ letters of reference, etc.
None of the Ukrainian universities appear on this list. It mentions Moscow’s Lomonosov University, which shows steady improvements (placed 155th in 2009, 183rd in 2008, 231st in 2007) and the St. Petersburg University (placed 168th in 2009).
After a number of blunders in the 2009 rankings, Times Higher Education decided to end their relationship with QS, choosing Thomson-Reuters as a partner for further annual World University Rankings. Times Higher Education will develop a new methodology in the coming months, in consultation with its readers, its editorial board and the firm. Thomson Reuters will collect and analyze the data used to produce the rankings on behalf of Times Higher Education. The results will be published annually from autumn 2010… As for QS, their nearest plans include developing a ranking for Eurasian universities. These changes are proof of the dynamic progress in the modern world’s educational domain and the active process of forming a global educational space. Ukraine’s place in this space depends on whether our best universities will make the ranking lists in the near future or not.
