15 May 2019

The Leiden Ranking, published by the Centre for Science and Technology Studies at Leiden University, has included data about scientific publications for several years. This year’s ranking contains lists relating to scientific impact, collaboration, gender and open access publication. The last two are new additions. The scientific impact lists show that Asian, especially Chinese, universities are producing an increasing percentage of the world’s scientific output. Although Harvard still holds first place for total publications there are now nine Chinese, one Korean and one Japanese university in the top twenty.

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13 May 2019

At the closing session of the IREG 2019 Conference in Bologna on 10 May 2019, Luiz Claudio Costa, President of IREG Observatory presented medals of Honorary IREG Observatory Member to the two outstanding members of the ranking community:

• Robert J. Morse, Chief Data Strategist at US News & World Report and pioneer in the field of professional university ranking
• Jan Sadlak, former President of IREG Observatory (2009 – 2018) and international expert on higher education

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12 May 2019

A major trend over the last few years has been the growing awareness of rankings in countries and regions that previously had shown little interest. This was addressed during the second day of IREG 2019 Conference in Bologna. A session on the role of rankings in Latin America was led by Luiz Claudio Costa, President of the IREG Observatory and former Minister of Education of Brazil. The speakers were Jacques Marcovitch, former Rector of the University of Sāo Paolo, Sabine Righetti, Coordinator of the Brazilian National Ranking, and Fernando Leon Garcia, of the Cetys University System of Mexico.

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09 May 2019

The IREG conference, with the theme ‘Rankings: A Challenge to Higher Education’ has opened at the University of Bologna (Alma Mater Studiorum Universita di Bologna). The conference began with an opening session that included Luiz C. Costa, President of the IREG Observatory on Academic Ranking and Excellence and Academic Vice Rector of IESB university, Brazil, Francesco Ubertini, Rector of the University of Bologna, and Gaetano Manfredi, Rector of the University of Naples.

Jaroslaw Gowin, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Science and Higher Education of Poland delivered a keynote speech: Rankings: a Challenge to Public Poicy? Reflection from Poland’s Perspective. In his speech Gowin remarked that current situation “creates the demand for verified and reliable information that reduces the complexity of a problem to its most relevant aspects” adding that “social expectations for rankings are clear –  rankings should provide trustworthy information allowing to dismiss alternatives that do not meet our criteria and narrow down the range of choice to the most appropriate options”.

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03 May 2019

The Islamic World Citation Center, based in Iran, has published a global ranking of universities. There are four criteria, Research, Education, International Activity, and Innovation. The overall rankings are dominated by the USA with Harvard in first place followed by Stanford and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). India continues to do poorly especially for Innovation where there are only three institutions in the top 1,000. In contrast, there are 142 Chinese institutions in the top 1,000 for that criterion.

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29 April 2019

The business magazine Forbes has published the latest edition of its Best Value Colleges ranking. This is an attempt to assist students and stakeholders by providing them with information about the economic value of a college education. Data were collected for 645 colleges and universities which were given scores for six criteria: quality determined by the 2018 Forbes Top Colleges, net price, net debt, alumni earnings, graduation rate, and access for low income students. The first four have a weighting of 20% each and the last two 10%.

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