Global University Rankings - A Comparative Analysis

Abstract

Over the last years, the global university rankings appeared in order to measure the performances of higher education institutions from all over the word after some pre-established indicators. The rankings make it possible to evaluate complex information according to various combinations of various factors. In this paper, I described and analyzed three of the most known, influential and widely observed international university rankings, in order to identify the similitudes and especially the differences between them regarding the methodology, criteria and weights, top universities, research and educational process or the global outlook, using the public and available information from their web-sites. Also, I want to see the impact of these rankings and how they influence the stakeholders, which are winners of each of these global university rankings, from want countries or regions. Global university rankings tend to focus more on the research area and less on teaching and learning environment. After the results of these rankings and others, all universities whether small or large, can improve practices that will make them stronger. For the contemporary society it is also important for a university to be able to innovate and help industry and businesses with consultancy and innovations.

Full text

Procedia Economics and Finance 26 ( 2015 ) 54 – 63
2212-5671 © 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Peer-review under responsibility of Academic World Research and Education Center
doi: 10.1016/S2212-5671(15)00838-2
ScienceDirect
Available online at www.sciencedirect.com
4th World Conference on Business, Economics and Management, WCBEM
Global university rankings - a comparative analysis
Adina-Petruta Pavel
a
*
a
Bucharest University of Economic Studies, The Institute for Doctoral Studies, Business Administration field, Bucharest, Romania
Abstract
Over the last years, the global university rankings appeared in order to measure the performances of higher education institutions
from all over the word after some pre-established indicators. The rankings make it possible to evaluate complex information
acco
rding to various combinations of various factors. In this paper, I described and analyzed three of the most known, influential
and widely observed international university rankings, in order to identify the similitudes and especially the differences between
them regarding the methodology, criteria and weights, top universities, research and educational process or the global outlook,
using the public and available information from their web-sites. Also, I want to see the impact of these rankings and how they
in
fluence the stakeholders, which are winners of each of these global university rankings, from want countries or regions. Global
university rankings tend to focus more on the research area and less on teaching and learning environment. After the results of
these rankings and others, all universities whether small or large, can improve practices that will make them stronger. For the
contemporary society it is also important for a university to be able to innovate and help industry and businesses with
consultancy and innovations.
© 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.
Peer-review under responsibility of Academic World Research and Education Center.
Keywords: global outlook, research, higher education, reputation, innovation
1. Introduction
According to the dictionary, a ra
nking represents a relationship between a set of items such that, for any two
items, the first is either “ranked higher than”, “ranked lower than” or “ranked equal to” the second. In mathematics,
th
is is known as a weak order or total preorder of objects. It is not necessarily a total order of objects because two
dif
ferent objects can have the same ranking.
* Adina-Petruta Pavel. Tel.: +4-072-355-4287.
E-mail address: adinappavel@gmail.com
© 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Peer
-review under responsibility of Academic World Research and Education Center

55
Adina-Petruta Pavel / Procedia Economics and Finance 26 ( 2015 ) 54 – 63
In the current globalized economy, global university rankings are used to measure their global competitiveness,
being simultaneously criticised and lauded. Most of the university rankings have been conducted by magazines,
n
ewspapers, websites, governments, or academics. The international rankings cover at this moment only a small
percentage of approx. 2-3% of the total of universities.
Why using rankings in higher education institu
tions? There are several reasons, such as:
The rapid globalization of higher education,
The internationalization of higher education,
Approx. 4 mil. students enrolled in higher education outside their country of origin and continually
increasing (7 million estimated students by 2020)
To encourage institutions to participate in broader national and international discussions.
To foster collaboration, such as research partnerships, student and faculty exchange programmes
The ke
y pillars for a world university are, regardless the specific of any university rankings, are:
 Teaching
 Research
 Knowledge transfer
 Global outlook
2. Research methodology
The m
ethodology for this comparative analysis contains:
9 Selection of university rankings
9 Ranking Criteria and Weights for each selected international ranking
9 Definition of Indicators
9 Data Sources
9 Top 20 best universities – similitudes and differences between the selected rankings
9 Comparative analysis, regarding the ranking criteria and weights, top universities,
statist
ics by regions and by countries.
3. The 2014 Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU)
The Academic Ranking for World Universities (ARWU) is th
e first world known university ranking. It was
compiled by the Center for World-Class Universities at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, starting from 2003 and
f
unded by the Chinese government and it is also known as Shanghai University Ranking. Now, this ranking is
maintained by the Shanghai Ranking Consultancy. This ranking uses six objective indicators to rank universities
from all over the world:
1) Staff awards (winning Nobel Prizes of Fields medals) – 20%;
2) Highly cited researchers – 20%;
3) Papers published in Nature and Science – 20%
4) Papers indexed in Science Index-Expanded and Social Science Citation Index – 20%;
5) Quality of education (Alumni winning Nobel Prizes or Fields medals) – 10%;
6) Per capita Performance of an institution – 10%.
Some criticisms of ARWU is that the methodology is focused towards the natural sciences and English language
s
cience journals. Also, in the opinion of some researchers (Armstrong and Sperry, 1994) the ARWU is known for
"relying solely on research indicators" and it doesn’t measure "the quality of teaching or the quality of humanities"
and "the ranking is heavily weighted toward institutions whose faculty or alumni have won Nobel Prizes.

56 Adina-Petruta Pavel / Procedia Economics and Finance 26 ( 2015 ) 54 – 63
Figure 1. The ARWU indicators
Source: own chart, after the methodology ARWU
In this rankings, the quality of education is measured by alumni who won a Nobel Prize or fields medals. Alumni
are def
ined as those who obtain bachelor, Master's or doctoral degrees from the evaluated institution. For alumni
obtain
ing degrees in 2001-2010 the weight for this indicator is 100%, for alumni obtaining degrees in 1991-2000 is
90%, f
or alumni obtaining degrees in 1981-1990 is 80%, and so on.
The quality of a faculty weights 40% of the total percentage, eq
ually split for 2 indicators: staff of the institution
wining Nobel Prizes (in Physics, Chemistry, Medicine and Economics) or field medals (in Mathematics) (20%) and
highly cited researchers (20%), selected by Thomson Reuters. Weight is also different: 100% for winners after 2011,
90% for winners in 2001-2010, 80% for winners in 1991-2000, 70% for winners in 1981-1990, and so on, and
f
inally 10% for winners in 1921-1930.
Also, the research output has a big percentage in this rank
ing (of 40%), according to the number of papers
published in Nature and Science between 2009 and 2013 and for papers indexed in Science Index-Expanded and
Social
Science Citation Index in 2013.
The academic performance per capita is measured by dividing the weighted scores of the above indicators
div
ided to the number of full-time equivalent academic staff. For ARWU 2014, the numbers of full-time equivalent
acad
emic staff are obtained for institutions in USA, UK, France, Canada, Japan, Italy, China, Australia, Netherlands,
Sweden, Switzerland, Belgium, South Korea, Czech, Slovenia, New Zealand etc.
According to the ARWU 2014 results, 80% of top 20 univ
ersities are from Americas and 20% from Europe. For
the overall ranking, in top 500, the majority of universities (41%) are from Europe, followed by universities from
Americas (35.4%), Asia (22,6%) and Africa (1%).
Table 1. ARWU 2014 results. Statistics by region
REGION
Top 20
Top 100
Top 200
Top 300
Top 400
Top 500
Americas
16
56
86
123
150
177
Europe
4
35
80
122
161
205
20%
20%
20%
20%
10%
10%
Staff awards (winning Nobel Prizes
of Fields medals)
Highly cited researchers
Papers published in Nature and
Science
Papers indexed in Science Index-
Expanded and Social Science
Citation
Quality of education (Alumni
winning Nobel Prizes or Fields
medals)
Per capita Performance of an
institution

57
Adina-Petruta Pavel / Procedia Economics and Finance 26 ( 2015 ) 54 – 63
Asia/Oceania
-
9
34
53
87
113
Africa
-
-
-
2
2
5
TOTAL
20
100
200
300
400
500
Source: after http://www.shanghairanking.com
According to the ARWU 2014 results, 80% of top 20 universities (16 universities) are from United States, 15%
(3 u
niversities) from United Kingdom and 1 university from Switzerland. In the first 100 universities, there are also
present universities from Germany, France, Netherlands, Australia, Canada, Japan and Sweden: 52% from US, 8%
from UK, 5% from Switzerland, 4% from Germany, 4% from France, 4% from Netherlands, 4% from Australia, 4%
from Canada, 3% from Japan and 3% from Sweden. In the overall ranking (top 500 universities), there are 146
universities from US (29.2%) and 38 from UK (7.6%).
Table 2. ARWU 2014 results. Statistics by country (first 10 countries)
COUNTRY
Top 20
Top 100
Top 200
Top 300
Top 400
Top 500
United States
16
52
77
104
125
146
United Kingdom
3
8
20
29
33
38
Switzerland
1
5
7
7
7
7
Germany
-
4
13
20
30
39
France
-
4
8
14
17
21
Netherlands
-
4
8
10
12
13
Australia
-
4
8
9
18
19
Canada
-
4
7
16
18
21
Japan
-
3
8
10
14
19
Sweden
-
3
5
8
10
11
Source: after http://www.shanghairanking.com
Harvard University remains the number one in the world for th
e 12th year, with a maxim total score, 100%. In
the figure from above, we can notice that the first 2 places are the same as in 2013 (first place – Harvard University,
secon
d place – Stanford University). Third and fourth places are occu
pied by Massachusetts Institute of Technology
and University of California-Berkeley, but the total scores are very tight (70.5% and 7
0.1%). The University of
Cambridge dropped from 1 place in 2013 to 5th place this year, even thought has a very high score on the indicator
regarding the awards (96.6%).
Table 3. The 2014 ARWU – Top ten universities and the scores obtained on the 6 indicators
World
Rank
2014
World
Rank
2013
Institution
Country
National
Rank
Score
on
Alumni
Score
on
Award
Score
on
HiCi
Score
on
N&S
Score
on
PUB
Score
on
PCP
Total
Score
1
1
Harvard University
US
1
100
100
100
100
100
75.3
100
2
2
Stanford University
US
2
41.8
82.8
79.8
71.1
70.9
51.9
72.1
3
4
Massachusetts Institute
of Technology
US
3
68.4
80.7
60.6
73.6
61.5
67.1
70.5
4
3
University of California-
Berkeley
US
4
66.8
79.4
65.3
67.5
68.1
55.9
70.1
5
5
University of Cambridge
UK
1
79.1
96.6
50.8
56.2
66.5
55.2
69.2
6
7
Princeton University
US
5
52.1
88.5
57.1
46.2
44.2
68.1
60.7

58 Adina-Petruta Pavel / Procedia Economics and Finance 26 ( 2015 ) 54 – 63
7
6
California Institute of
Technology
US
6
48.5
66.7
49.3
60
44.9
100
60.5
8
8
Columbia University
US
7
65.1
65.9
51.6
55
69.1
33.1
59.6
9
9
University of Chicago
US
8
51.4
86.3
48.4
43
50/7
41.5
57.4
10
10
University of Oxford
UK
2
51
54.9
52.8
52.7
72.7
43
57.4
Source: after https://docs.google.com/file/d/0Bw2rAawlHlvBT0lnVWtQR3BSVlE/edit
4. QS World University Rankings
QS World University Rankings are produced by British Quacquarelli Symonds and published annually since
2004. C
urrently considers over 3,000 institutions, and ranks more than 800. From 2004 to 2009 the QS rankings
w
ere published in collaboration with Times Higher Education (THE) and were known as the Times Higher
Edu
cation-QS World University Rankings. From 2010 Times Higher Education split from QS, th
e last one assuming
the sole publication of rankings produced with its own methodology. Also, Times Higher Education has created a
n
ew rankings methodology in partnership with Thomson Reuters. Nowadays, the QS rankings comprise both world
and region
al league tables, independent and different from each other regarding the criteria and its weighs.
The methodology of QS World University Rankings consists in a comparison of top 800 universities across four
broad
areas of interest to prospective students: research, teaching, employability and international outlook. QS
World University Ranking uses 6 indicators to assess these 4 key areas, with different weights:
1. Academic reputation
40%
2. Employer reputation
10%
3. Faculty/student ratio
20%
4. Citations per faculty
20%
5. International student ratio
5%
6. International staff ratio
5%
The biggest percentage in this rankings (40%) is for academic reputation. The academic reputation is measured
based of a global survey of academics, which asks active academicians across the world about the top universities in
fields they know about. Participants can nominate up to 30 universities but are not able to vote for their own. This
indicator represents the most controversial part of the QS World University Rankings.
A similar indicator regarding the method of obtaining the data is th
e employer reputation or recruiter review. The
data are collected from recruiters who hire graduates from a certain university, with the purpose of identifying their
opinions and to be of help for potential students.
Citations per faculty are among the most widely used inputs to national and global university rankings, with a
criteria
weight of 20%. The total number of citations for a five-year period is divided by the number of academicians
in
a university to yield the score for this measure. QS uses citations from Scopus databases, meanwhile Times
Higher Education is collaborating with Thomson Reuters. There have been some criticism related to this rankings,
due to the fact that Scopus database contains more non-English and smaller journals than Thomson Reuters.
The last 2 indicators are related to the i
nternationalization of higher education institutions and counts 10%, half
for international students and the other half for international staff.
Table 4. QS World University Rankings. 2014 Results: Top ten higher education institutions and their obtained overall score
RANK
2014
RANK
2013
INSTITUTION
COUNTRY/
REGION
OVERALL
SCORE
1
1
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
US
100
2=
3
University of Cambridge
UK
99.4
2=
4
Imperial College London
UK
99.4
4
2
Harvard University
US
99.3
5=
6
University of Oxford
UK
99.2
5=
4
UCL (University College London)
UK
99.2
7
7
Stanford University
US
98.3

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Adina-Petruta Pavel / Procedia Economics and Finance 26 ( 2015 ) 54 – 63
8
10=
California Institute of Technology (Caltech)
US
97.1
9
10=
Princeton University
US
96.6
10
8
Yale University
US
96.5
Source: after http://www.theguardian.com
5. Times Higher Education World University Rankings
Another well known world ranking is Times Higher Education, which published between 2004-2009 in
ass
ociation with Quacquarelli Symonds (QS). In 2009 Times Higher Education broke this association and signed an
agreement for collaboration with Thomson Reuters and published for the first time after its own methodology in
2011.
The methodology for these rankings contain 13 performance in
dicators which cover 5 key areas: teaching (30%),
research (30%), citations (30%), industry income (2.5%), and international outlook (7.5%). To calculate the overall
rankings, "Z-scores" were created for all data sets except for the resu
lts of the academic reputation survey. This
calculation allows comparisons between different types of data.
1) Teaching: The learning environment (30%) employs five perform
ance indicators related to the teaching and
learning environment of the analyzed institution:
a) Reputation survey (teaching) (15%)
b) PhD/Academic staff (6%)
c) Total students/ Academic staff
(Staff/students ratio) (4.5%)
d) Institutional income/ Academic staff (2.25%)
e) PhD awards/Bachelor (2.25%)
The dominant indicator (15%) in this category is the acad
emic reputation survey, carried out by Thomson
Reuters, which examine the prestige of an institution in teaching and research.
2) Citations: Research impact (30%)
This indicator regarding the research inf
luence is the single most influential of the 13 indicators, with a weigh of
30 per cent of the overall score, showing and highlighting the importance and impact of the ideas and knowledge
spread by universities. For this year rankings, there have been analyzed more than 50 million citations from 6
million journals, published between 2008-2013, from a total of 12 million academic journals indexed by Thomson
Reuter
s' Web of Science database.
3) Research: Volume, income and reputation (30%)
This category contains three indicators:
a) Reputation survey (research) - 18%
b) Research income/ Academic staff - 6%
c) Scholarly papers/ Academic staff - 6%
The most predominant indicator, as we can see in the perce
ntages from above, is based on the results of a global
survey regarding the university’s reputation for research.

60 Adina-Petruta Pavel / Procedia Economics and Finance 26 ( 2015 ) 54 – 63
Figure 2. Times Higher Education World University Rankings. Methodology: areas of analysis and their weights
Source: own chart, after the methodology of THE World University Rankings
4) International outlook: peop
le, research (7.5%)
This category analyzes the internationalization and diversit
y of an institution and, also, the degree of
collaboration between international academics. It contains three indicato
rs, equally weighted (2.5% each), as
follows:
a) International/domestic staff ratio
b) International/domestic students’ ratio
c) International co-authorship
5) Industry income: innovation (2.5%)
This area suggests the extent to which businesses are will
ing to pay for research and a university's ability to
attract funding in the competitive commercial marketplace.
For 2014, the occupants of top ten according
to this global university ranking are:
Table 5. THE Rankings. 2014 results: Top ten higher education institutions and their obtained overall score
RANK
2014
INSTITUTION
COUNTRY/
REGION
OVERALL
SCORE
1
California Institute of Technology (Caltech)
US
94.3
2
Harvard University
US
93.3
3
University of Oxford
UK
93.2
4
Stanford University
US
92.9
5
University of Cambridge
UK
92.0
6
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
US
91.9
7
Princeton University
US
90.9
8
University of California, Berkeley
US
89.5
9=
Imperial College London
UK
87.5
9=
Yale University
US
87.5
Source: after www. http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-university-rankings/2014-15/
Teaching
30%
Research
30%
Citantions
30%
[CATEGORY
NAME]
[VALUE]%
[CATEGORY
NAME]
[VALUE]%
Teaching
Research
Citantions
International Outlook
Industry Income

61
Adina-Petruta Pavel / Procedia Economics and Finance 26 ( 2015 ) 54 – 63
6. Comparison between the ARWU, QS and THE and conclusions
Firstly in this paper I described these 3 most known, i
nfluential and widely observed international university
rankings. Then I analyzed the methodology, criteria, indicators and weights for each of these rankings and, also, top
ten universities.
As we can observe in the figure from below (figure 3), there are a lot of
similitudes between the criteria and
indicators used by each ranking, but the weights are sometimes very different.
Figure 3. Comparative analysis between the methodologies of ARWU, QS and THE
For instance, for ARWU the predominant criteria (40%) is ab
out the research output and papers published in
Nature and Science and for papers indexed in Science Index-Expanded and Social Science Citation Index. For QS,
th
e highest percentage (40%) is given to a global survey about the academic reputation of a higher education
institution. For THE, the percentages are equally split between teaching and learning environment, research and
reputation and citations (30% for each of these key areas). A similitude between these global ranking regarding their
criteria is the indicator referring to citations: ARWU-Highly cited researchers (20%), QS-Citations, research impact
(20%) an
d THE-citations, research influence (30%).
The diversity and internationalization of a university is measured by 2 indicators in QS rankings: international
stu
dent ratio (5%) and international staff ratio (5%) and by 3 indicators in T
HE (2.5% each, so a total of 7.5% of the
overall score): international/domestic staff ratio, international/domestic students’ ratio, international co-authorship
and no specified indicators in ARWU. But on the other sid
e, ARWU puts a great accent on the Nobel prizes and
Fields prizes won by the alumni or staff.
For 2014-2015, these three global rankings have different winn
ers, even though most of the top ten universities
can be find also in the others rankings, but on another position, as showed in the table form below.
For ARWU, Harvard ranked first for 12 years, in THE rankings occu
pies the second place and in QS rankings
the fourth place.
For QS rankings, the first place is occupied by Massachusetts I
nstitute of Technology (MIT), which ranks in
third position in ARWU and fifth position in THE.
For THE rankings, the California Institute of Technology ranks first, even if in the other two analysed rankings
occu
pies a much lower position, namely 7
th
(ARWU) or 8
th
(QS), even though the methodologies of QS and THE
are more resembling.
The University of Chicago and Yale University occupy almost the same positions in every of these three global
ARWU (Shanghai)
Research Output (N&S, PUB)
20%+20%
Staff Awards
20%
Highly cited researchers
20%
Quality of Education (Alumni)
10%
Per Capita Performance
10%
QS
Academic reputation
40%
Faculty to student ratio
20%
Citations (for research
impact)
20%
Employers reputation
(Graduates)
10%
International student
ratio
5%
International staff ratio
5%
THE
Teaching: the learning environment
30 %
Research: volume, income and reputation
30 %
Citations: research influence
30 %
International outlook: staff, students and research
7.5 %
Industry income: innovation
2.5 %

62 Adina-Petruta Pavel / Procedia Economics and Finance 26 ( 2015 ) 54 – 63
rankings.
The differences between top ten universities of each of t
hese three rankings are: The Imperial College of London
ranks second in the world according to QS and 9
th
in THE rankings, but in ARWU ranks only the 22
nd
position;
University of California-Berkeley is in top ten in ARWU and THE rankings, but occupies the 27
th
position in QS.
Table 6. Top ten universities – comparison between the results of the three global university rankings, for 2014
The position in the ranking
ARWU
QS
THE
Harvard University
1
4
2
Stanford University
2
7
4
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
3
1
5
University of California-Berkeley
4
27
8
University of Cambridge
5
2
7
Princeton University
6
9
6
California Institute of Technology
7
8
1
Columbia University
8
14
13
University of Chicago
9
11
9
University of Oxford
10
5
2
Imperial College London
22
3 (=2)
9
UCL (University College London)
20
6 (=5)
22
Yale University
11
10
9
After the regions they belongs, most of the top 20 universi
ties according to these three world rankings are from
United States, followed by the ones from United Kingdom. Comparing to the other rankings, QS rankings contains
the higher number of universities from Europe, namely from UK (8 universities).
If we analyze top ten universities in these three rankings, i
n ARWU rankings there are 2 universities from UK
and 8 from US, in QS rankings there are 4 universities from UK and 6 from US and in THE rankings.
Table 7. Top 20 world universities, after regions, 2014
ARWU
QS
THE
United States
16
12
15
United Kingdom
3
8
3
Switzerland
(ETH Zürich – Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zürich)
1
-
1
Canada (University of Toronto)
-
-
1
ARWU rankings uses measures that reflect elements of academic quality, including how many of an institution’s
alu
mni have won a Nobel prize and how many faculty have won Nobel prizes as a result of the work done while at
the university (in order to prevent rich universities from “buying” Nobel prize winners). The importance of research
ou
tputs is measured by examining where and how often faculty publish in certain key indicator journals. This
h
ighly quantitative methodology produces a ranked list that represents some very impressive educational and
research outcomes, but from a narrow perspective.
The QS and THE rankings are more broadly based and include more diverse indicators, measurements of
s
tudent numbers, diversity of faculty and students, etc., but are significantly influenced by an opinion poll/global
sur
vey of faculty and other researchers around the world that focus
es on what they know about research strengths of
other institutions. Global university rankings tend to focu
s more on the research area and less on teaching and

63
Adina-Petruta Pavel / Procedia Economics and Finance 26 ( 2015 ) 54 – 63
learning environment. By understanding the rankings’ methodologies, all universities whether small or large, can
improve practices that will make them stronger and help them in the future.
Acknowledgements
This work was co-financed from the European Social Fund through Sectorial Operational Programme Human
R
esources Development 2013-2020, project number POSDRU 159/1.5/S/134197 ”Performance and excellence in
docto
ral and postdoctoral research in Romanian economics science domain”.
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