EUA publishes first review of main international university rankings

EUA has published a major new report “Global University Rankings and their Impact” that analyses the methodologies used in the main international university rankings and also refers to a number of other ongoing projects seeking to measure university performance.

No Data for Measuring Third Mission?

In an interview with the Austrian daily newspaper "Die Presse", Phil Baty, editor of THE World University Ranking, said that rankings are not able to reflect on some activities of universities (e.g. "a university's contribution to society") as their is no data available worldwide to measure these activities.


***Extract from Interview, Die Presse, 29.05.2011***

Die Presse: Kritiker bemängeln, dass Rankings viele der wichtigsten Aspekte von Universitäten nicht erfassen können.

Phil Baty: Da stimme ich zu. Für manche der tollsten Dinge, die Universitäten leisten, gibt es keine Daten, die man weltweit vergleichen könnte. Wenn es darum geht, jemandes Zukunftschancen zu verbessern, in einem Studenten eine Idee zu entzünden oder um den Beitrag, den eine Uni für die Gesellschaft leistet. Rankings können das nicht widerspiegeln, aber was sie können, ist andere Dinge zu untersuchen, die für Universitäten, für Gesellschaften und für Studenten im Kern wichtig sind. Die Fähigkeit etwa, einflussreiche Forschung zu betreiben, ist in einer Wissensgesellschaft ausschlaggebend.

POLICY SEMINAR: Measuring the university’s Third Mission: Indicators for Technology Transfer and Innovation activities

As a part of the “E3M: European Indicators and Ranking Methodology for University Third Mission” project, on Friday, 13^th May 2011 Dublin Institute of Technology, one of the project partners, is organising a half-day seminar that aims to explore Technology Transfer and Innovation (TTI) as one of the strands of the University’s Third Mission. A set of TTI indicators identified during the project will be introduced and participants will be asked to discuss them in the broader policy context during group discussions.

The seminar is aimed at higher education institutions, policy makers, government agencies, industry representatives, researchers and networks focusing on Technology Transfer and Innovation.

The event will consist of two parts. The first part will kick off with the introduction of the E3M project by Dr Mike Murphy. Next Dermot Coughlan from the University of Limerick will provide an overview of Technology Transfer as Universities' Third Mission. The first session will finish with the presentation of the Indicators for Measuring Technology Transfer and Innovation, which have been identified in the Delphi process carried out in the E3M project. The second session will involve group discussions on the indicators presented in the broader context of higher education policy.

For more information about this event please email Ela Krawczyk at elzbieta.krawczyk@dit.ie.

Facing the Rankings - Conference, 20-21 January 2011, Vienna

The interactive conference "Facing the rankings - Using benchmarking tools for strategic positioning" (Vienna, 20-21 January 2011) will look at the value of benchmarking as a modern management tool among the range of transparency tools such as classifications, rankings and benchmarking exercises while at the same time discuss the relevance and strength of indicators, focusing more specifically on internationalization, university-enterprise cooperation and regional innovation and linking them directly to the work carried out in the U-Map and U-Multirank projects.
More information on the Project and Conference website.

Identifying the Best: The CHE ExcellenceRanking 2010

The CHE Centre for Higher Education Development (Gütersloh/Germany) has designed an “ExcellenceRanking”, a ranking of a selected group of European Universities. The CHE applied a two-step approach for analysis. First, all European departments in the surveyed fields were compared by a few general indicators. Second, for those departments that excelled in these indicators, an indepth analysis was run based on an institutional questionnaire and a student survey. The first issue of the ranking, released in 2007, concentrated on the natural sciences and mathematics. The second issue, released in 2009, was dedicated to economics, political science and psychology. In 2010, the study was repeated for the natural sciences. The paper issued in October 2010 covers the results from the 2009 and 2010 issues.

Ranking on US doctoral programs

The Chronicle has published its interactive ranking on US doctoral programs for 2010. About 5,000 university doctoral programs, in 59 fields of study, have been ranked in terms of quality by the National Research Council. The Chronicle is a weekly newspaper with news, information, and jobs for college and university faculty and administrators.

Global rankings system methodology reflects universities’ core missions

Times Higher Education magazine has just published the full and final methodology for its 2010 World University Rankings. Weightings for all 13 indicators revealed.

http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=413382