(Warsaw-Brussels, 15 December 2011) IREG Observatory on Academic Ranking and Excellence opens, on a voluntary basis, the audit procedure for national, regional and global university [academic] rankings - the IREG Ranking Audit. The start of the IREG Ranking Audit ref1ects awareness about the growing attention university rankings have received in recent years.

(Warsaw – Brussels, 7 December 2011) The General Assembly of the IREG Observatory on Academic Ranking and Excellence admited three institutions from Kazakhstan as its new members: the al-Farabi Kazakh National University in Almaty, the Kazakh-British Technical University in Astana and the National Accreditation Center of the Ministry of Education and Science of Kazakhstan. IREG Observatory is growing; it was founded by 9 members in December 2009 but now, two years later, it has 23 members from Europe, Asia and North America, and some more applications for membership are pending.

(Warsaw-Taipei, 17 November  2011) The IREG Observatory on Academic Ranking and Excellence has opened registration for the IREG-6 Conference: Academic Rankings and Advancement of Higher Education - Lessons from Asia and other Regions, Taipei, 18-20 April 2012, organized in cooperation with the Higher Education Evaluation & Accreditation Council of Taiwan (HEEACT).

(Brussels, 15 November, 2011) The European University Association has launched a major new report which compares university autonomy across 26 European countries. In addition to an in-depth analysis of the current state of institutional autonomy in Europe, the study includes four scorecards which rank and rate higher education systems in four autonomy areas: organisational, financial, staffing and academic autonomy.

(Brussels-Warsaw-Taipei, 25 October 2011)  IREG Observatory on Academic Ranking and Excellence invites you to the international IREG-6 Conference: Academic Rankings and Advancement of Higher Education - Lessons from Asia and other Regions, Taipei, 18-20 April 2012. The Conference is organized in cooperation with the Higher Education Evaluation & Accreditation Council of Taiwan (HEEACT).

(Bratislava 12 October 2011)  Over 70 participants from 24 countries two days discussed national ranking and their influence on the quality of higher education. The debate had been initiated by Bob Morse of US News & World Report (How it all begun and where is it heading), Waldemar Siwinski of Perspektywy Education Foundation (National rankings as an integrated part of the global university landscape) and Gero Federkeil of CHE Centre for Development of Higher Education (What can national rankings learn from the U-Multirank project).

(London, 5 September, 2011) 8th annual QS World University Rankings® reveals top 300 universities based on six indicators including surveys of over 33,00 global academics and 16,000 graduate employers, the largest of their kind ever conducted. New in 2011: Results published alongside comparative international tuition fee now live on www.topuniversities.com

(Washington DC, 4 September 2011) The Sunday edition of the Washington Post in the article U.S. News college rankings are denounced but not ignored, analyzes the phenomenon of the US News & World Report ranking.

Bob Morse is a wonk, a number-cruncher who works in a messy office at a struggling publishing company in Georgetown. He’s also one of the most powerful wonks in the country, wielding the kind of power that elicits enmity and causes angst.

(Shanghai, 15 August, 2011) The Center for World-Class Universities of Shanghai Jiao Tong University released today the 2011 Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU), marking its 9th consecutive year of measuring the performance of top universities worldwide.

Harvard University tops the 2011 list; other Top 10 universities are: Stanford, MIT, Berkeley, Cambridge, Caltech, Princeton, Columbia, Chicago and Oxford. In Continental Europe, ETH Zurich (23rd) in Switzerland takes first place, followed by Paris-Sud (40th) and Pierre and Marie Curie (41st) in France. The best ranked universities in Asia are University of Tokyo (21st) and Kyoto University (27th) in Japan.