University rankings new method
Download 54.52 Kb.
|
- Navigate this page:
- I. BASIC APPROCHES FOR RANKING A UNIVERSITY
- II. RANKING METHODOLOGY
- V. NEW METHOD OF RANKING
- Table showing the criteria, indicators and respective weighting for the new method
- VI. CONCLUSION
UNIVERSITY RANKINGS – NEW METHOD Sabah Al – Najjar Mathematics and Statistics Department, UC – Zayed University P .O .Box 19282 – Dubai, UAE Email: Sabah.alnajjar@zu.ac.ae ABSTRACT In the past few years university rankings have become an unavoidable part of academic life. It has created competition between institutions and has become a marketing tool. It has become a helpful and/or complimentary factors for evaluating universities and their processes. Ranking is a term used to refer to the rating and ordering of higher educational institutions. It is controversial and no ranking is absolutely objective. We should be cautious about any ranking. It would be impossible to have a comprehensive ranking world-wide because of their huge differences through a large variety of countries and the technical difficulties of obtaining comparable data. Rankings focus not only on universities as a whole, but also on various fields such as teaching, research etc. Ranking lists originally began at the national level, and within a clearly defined political and cultural region. International ranking lists are offering highly condensed comparative information. However, we might ask: how useful is this information and how reliable? And whether or not the ranking affect the decision-making , the students and the university’s behavior, and whether the ranking have affected on the students admissions. One thing is certain: the wider the boundary and the more diverse the setting, the less valid are the ranking results. Political authority and policy makers are usually interested in national and regional rankings. The purpose of this work is intended to provide some kind of review, with background information on most popular existing ranking systems; to help in understanding some of the pitfalls of university ranking; and to suggest a new objective, and to provide a reliable and useful measurement for ranking , such as, Gulf GCC universities. Keywords: Assessment, Criteria, Indicators, Media, Methodology, Organizations, Research, Standardize, Systems, Variables. I. BASIC APPROCHES FOR RANKING A UNIVERSITY There are many approaches based on a number of principles such as:
II. RANKING METHODOLOGY There are major differences in ranking methodology used: -The different definition of university quality; -The different criteria and indicators to measure quality; and -The different weightings for each indicator.
The ranking process starts with the collection of information, existing data sources, site visits, studies and research. The type and quantity of variables are then decided upon and selected, and indicators and sub-indicators will be standardized and weighted from the selected variables. Finally, the calculation and the analysis are conducted. Following this the universities are sorted into ranking order. Thus indicators can play a crucial role in the decision making in the results of ranking. Those indicators and criteria usually will take into consideration the following:- scientific, pedagogic, administrative and socio -economic aspects, student staff ratio, first year students, score in secondary schools, teaching and research, library and computer spending, drop out rate, satisfaction (student faculty), study conditions, employment perspective etc; III. RANKING ORGANIZATIONS Ranking has both direct impact on the higher education system and have attracted public attention. Because several systems have been proposed to rank the academic institutions, we can classify the organizations that rank by: (i)-Magazines and Media; ranking was done primarily for commercial reasons to attract customers. Some magazines used: US New World Report, Newsweek, MacLean's Magazine, The Financial Times, The Times, Times Higher Education Supplement (THES), Economist, Der Spiegel, Le Nouvel Observateur, Liberation…etc; (ii)Educational authorities such as -Teaching Quality Assessment and Research Assessment Exercise' in the UK, Scientific Academies In The University Sectors in the Netherlands, The Teaching and Research Ranking Lists in Germany, the National Research Council's Ranking Lists Research Doctorate program in the USA, the Shanghai Ranking Lists in China,… etc. IV. THE MAIN CURRENT UNIVERSITY RANKING
There are some 15-20 criteria used in the different rankings. The ranking criteria vary but they are mostly based on four general aspects, Career progress of alumni, International focus of the program, Research strength of the faculty, and gender diversity with regard to participants, faculty and board. (vi) CHE Ranking; In 2002 the most serious attempt to put a German University ranking system in place came to fruition. The centre for University Development (CHE) compiled the study with the German weekly magazine 'Sterm'. They looked at 242 nationally recognized universities and professional schools. More than 100,000 students and 10,000 professors took part in the process. Around 30 indicators were measured. Some variable data such as student numbers, the average study duration and the number of graduations were also considered. However, judgments on the quality of teaching and specialist areas played a more decisive role than factors such as the atmosphere at the university or the library equipment.
•Data extracted by U.S. News from educational institutes (Via annual survey or from the school website itself)
administrators.
unbiased towards the importance of categories. This is due to the via equal weightings devised for the calculation of the final scores. The technique of ranking used relied on the following 3 categories and its sub components;
- Military training corporations in particular the percentage of Students enrolled for the Army and the Navy reserve. -Alumni and the percentage of those working in the peace corporations -Community service projects and the percentage of federal work-study grants allocated to it.
-Amount of spending on research from the institution -Amount of Ph.D. awards in Science and engineering -Data regarding undergraduate alumni who those who have achieved a Ph.D. in various subjects
UNESCO-European Centre for Higher Education. (UNESCO-CEPES) and Institute for Higher Education Policy in Washington DC. In the second meeting in Berlin, in 2006, the IREG sets the principles of quality and good practice in ranking of higher education. It sets a framework for the elaboration and dissemination of ranking whether they are national, regional or global in scope, which ultimately would lead to a system of continuous improvement and refinement of methodologies used to conduct these rankings. So many methods and hypothesis in ranking universities are resulting people mistrusting the effectiveness and they often ask if they are even worth using (especially since the ranking methods serve different purposes utilizing certain indices. From this it can be said that using a more unified and systematic approach, using unbiased guidelines such as UNESCO – Europe recommendations are more reliable. In order to find excellence (between the universities) in educational and research performance, taking IREG’s recommendations, as a framework, and putting in our mind the following questions:- Do the young universities need a winning Nobel prize or a Fields medal in mathematics? Do the awards have any relevant affect on the quality of learning or are they simply there for university image? How can we give the younger universities the chance to prove themselves and demonstrate their academic ability? A new method has been proposed to evaluate in a more objective, reliable and useful way. The previous ranking methods seemed not to have a good and constructive validity, either in addressing their methodology, or in serving fairly many universities (including those in the GCC). The most popular ranking methods depend heavily on research performance. The Goals of this new rankings are;
The Universities will be assessed and contrasted using three broad criteria's ; teaching, research and outreach (i.e. performance in the community service). Further to this, the criteria of the performance measures consist of more indicators . Table below shows the criteria, their indicators, and respective weighting. Table showing the criteria, indicators and respective weighting for the new method
We utilize the Weigh – and – add approach. Taken as a whole the score is determined via weighted criteria which are measured by sub-indicators serving as alternatives for the quality of both academia & institution. Weighted scores relevant to each indicator is added to produce an overall score. After comparison with other universities the overall score will finally determine the ranking position in the league table. The highest performer for each indicator is given a score of 100. Remaining universities are then calculated as a percentage of the top scorer. The scores for each indicator are weighted as shown above, which arrives at a final overall score for the institution. After the final step of calculation and analysis, the universities are sorted into a ranking order. VI. CONCLUSION It would be impossible to have a comprehensive ranking world-wide because of their huge differences through a large variety of countries and the technical difficulties of obtaining comparable data. A new method has been proposed to evaluate in a more objective, reliable and useful way Therefore, it is recommendable to start ranking locally before moving on to regional. After this has been done ranking in a global context can be targeted. This would contribute to learning our strengths and weaknesses which would in turn assist in closing the gaps for globalization purposes.
Australian Universities Quality Agency (AUQA): Ranking of Higher Education Institutions, ISBN: 1 877090 57 3, Occasional Publications Series No: 6. http://www.auqa.edu.au/files/publications/ranking_of_higher_education_institutions_final.pdf Christopher Morphew and Bruce Baker ,On the Utility of National Datasets and Resource Cost Models for Estimating Faculty Instructional Costs in Higher Education, J of Education Finance 33:1, 2007, PP20 – 48 Goldstein, H. / Spiegelhalter, D.J.: League tables and their limitations: Statistical issues in comparisons of institutional performance, in: JOURNAL OF THE Journal of the Royal Statistical Society. Series A (Statistics in Society), 1996 , vol. 159, no. 3, p. 385-409. Hanges, Paul J.; Lyon, Julie S. Relationship Between U.S. News and World Report's and the National Research Council's Ratings/Rankings of Psychology Departments, American Psychologist, v60 n9 p1035-1037 Dec 2005 How the guide compiled, The Sunday Times, September 23,2007. Jonathan King, Public Affairs, We're No. 2! (Now what?) No, it's not the BCS standings. A new set of university rankings places Berkeley second worldwide. Should we shout the news from the rooftops, or put it gingerly back in Pandora's box? UC BERKELEV News, 2004. John PA Ioannidis, Nikolaos A Patsopoulos, Fotini K Kavvoura, Athina Tatsioni, Evangelos Evangelous, Ioanna Kouri, Despina G Contopoulos-Ioannidis, and George Liberopoulos; International ranking systems for universities and institutions: a critical appraisal, BMC Medicine 5: 30, Oct 2007. Kimberly D. Elsbach, Roderick M. Kramer, Members’ Responses to Organizational Identity Threats: Encountering and Countering the Business Week Rankings. Administrative Science Quarterly, V41, p442-76 S’96. N.C. Liu and Y. Cheng, (2005), Academic Ranking of World Universities – Methodologies and Problems, Higher Education in Europ, Vol. 30, No 2. Michael Sauder and Ryon Lancaster, Do Rankings Matter? The Effects of U.S. News & World Report Rankings on the Admissions Process of Law Schools, Law & Society Review, Volume 40, Number 1 (2006) Vivien A. Beattie and Alan Goodacre, 2005,A New Method for Ranking Academic Journals in accounting and Finance, University of Stirling Accounting, Finance and Law Working paper No. 01. Academic Rankings of Universities in the OIC countries, Statistical, Economics, and Social Research and Training Centre for Islamic Countries (SESRTCIC), http://www.sesrtcic.org, 2007 Academic Rankings of Universities in the OIC countries, Statistical, Economics, and Social Research and Training Centre for Islamic Countries (SESRTCIC), http://www.sesrtcic.org, 2007 Academic Ranking of World Universities, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_Ranking_of_world_Universities. “Academic strike back at spurious rankings” http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/251-guid.html Berlin Principle on Ranking of Higher Education Institutions, www.cepes.ro/hed/meetings/berlin06/Berlin Principles.pdf Clark Keer, The purpose of a university is to make students safe for idea – not ideas safe for students, http://www.topuniversities.com/worlduniversityrankings/methodology/purpose_amp_app/ College and University Rankings, International Rankings, http://www.library.uiuc.edu/edx/rankint.htm College and university rankings, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/College_and_university_rankings Performance Ranking of Scientific papers for World Universities, http://ranking.heeact.edu.tw/en-us/2008/TOP/100 How do we identify Highly Cited Researchers?, http://isihighlycited.com/isi_copy/howweidentify.htm Robert Morse and Sam Flanigan, How We Calculate the Rankings, http://www.usnews.com/articles/education/best-colleges/2008/08/21/how-we-calculat Ranking Web of World Universities, www.mavir.net New Method offers Better Way To Rank Universities, Researchers Say, University of Florida News, July 2000, http://news.ufl.edu/2000/07/26/top-us/ University Rankings, World Education News & Reviews, Volume 19, 4, 2006, http://www.wes.org/eWENR/06aug/practical.htm. The Methodology: A simple overview, TOPUNIVERSITIES, http://www.topuniversities.com/worlduniversityrankings/methodology/simple_overview/ Ranking Web of World universities 2008, http://www.webometrics.info/top4000.asp THES – QS World University Rankings, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/THES_University_Rankings The Washington Monthly’s Annual College Guide, http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2006/0609.collegeguide.html U.S. News & World Report, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_News_&_World_Report [] 
Download 54.52 Kb. Share with your friends:
|