AppliedHE, a Singapore based higher education website, has just published the first edition of Rankometer, a composition system that combines the results of five well known global rankings.
Conditions for inclusion in Rankometer were publication in the previous year, ranking of at least 1,000 universities, and being in the top five for Google News hits.
The five rankings are QS World University Rankings, Shanghai Ranking Consultancy Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU), the Times Higher Education (THE) World University Rankings, Leiden Ranking (top 10% metric), and Webometrics Ranking Web of Universities.
Universities were only included in Rankometer if they were included in the QS world rankings.
There is an analysis section that contains some interesting points. A comparison of the five rankings shows the degree of similarity or difference. The highest correlation coefficient is between QS and THE (0.66) and the lowest between QS and Leiden (0.27). The analysis also notes a tendency for rankings to be biased towards universities in their home countries. ARWU, THE, and Leiden favour those in China, the UK and the Netherlands.
Although there are some cases of big discrepancies between the rankings the composite ranks overall are not too surprising.
The top five universities are:
- Stanford University
- Harvard University
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
- University of Oxford
- University of Cambridge.
The top universities in their various regions are Tsinghua University, University of Sāo Paulo, National Autonomous University of Mexico, University of Melbourne, and University of Cape Town.
Source
AppliedHE