Charon, Antoinette

Wauters, Jean-Pierre

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Special FeatureSee http://www.oxfordjournals.org/our_journals/ndtplus/University ranking: a new tool for the evaluation of highereducation in EuropeAntoinette Charon1 and Jean-Pierre Wauters21Head International Relations, University of Lausanne and 2Department of Nephrology–Hypertension, UniversityHospital, Berne, SwitzerlandKeywords: university; ranking; evaluationIntroductionAfter the personal publication impact factor andclinical quality assessment tools, university rankingwould appear to be developing as yet another intrusiveinstrument in our academic and professional life.For decades now, based on an increasing worldwidedesire for comparative information, ranking hasprogressively become a well-accepted practice in manyfields of human activity: sports, personal wealth,banking, schools and hospitals. Since higher education(HE) has always been very international, and univer-sities, which are becoming more global, have so manyinternal and external stakeholders, the application ofranking to university activities has become unavoid-able: students need rankings to choose where to study,scientists to know where to work, governments, whereto invest and university leaders, where they stand [1,2].Following a preliminary conversation with oureditor, the usefulness of the present review becameevident when on 22 February 2007, a Google search on‘university ranking’ provided 27 900 000 links devotedto the topic, while a simultaneous Pubmed search onlyidentified 204 items published since 1968, devoted totopics as diverse as extra-pyramidal symptoms inneuroleptic patients, dento-maxillo-facial variabilityof cleido-cranial dysplasia or epidemiological aspectsof Brucellosis in Bosnia and Herzegovina. However,we found not a single article truly devoted to universityranking.Historical backgroundWhile national ranking or rating systems of HEinstitutions has been introduced in a few countriesover the last decade, the first worldwide globaluniversity ranking was published in 2003 by theInstitute of Higher Education at the Shanghai JiaoTong University (SJTU), in an attempt to ascertain theactual standing of Chinese HE institutions in compar-ison with recognized world-class universities and also todetect prestigious international partners with which toestablish links [3]. However, some of the indicatorsused, such as the number of Nobel Prizes and FieldsMedals winners educated at a given institution, or theparticular weight given to articles published in Natureand Science, were debatable and indeed forcefullydebated.In 2004, the Times Higher Education Supplement(THES), a weekly UK publication in the HE sector,came up with its own standards and ranking [4]. Bothrankings rapidly gained wide popularity within andbeyond the academic world and an expert grouprecently set up guidelines on the principles andmethodology of international HE ranking [5].Meanwhile, some more regional, less widespreadclassifications have also been proposed: the GermanCentre for Higher Education Development, a sub-group of the Deutscher Akademischer AusstauchDienst, annually publishes its own per disciplinerating of German, and now also Austrian and Dutch,HE institutions [6]. The Spanish Research Council inMadrid has initiated a Webometrics tool, based on theyearly worldwide number of electronic online HEpublications and link citations, as reflected by the topinternet search engines [7].ResultsWith indicators initially not commonly accepted asapprehending the global quality of an institution, theSJTU and THES ranking lists led to three types ofreaction: severe doubt and scepticism as to theusefulness of this kind of exercise was the mostgeneralized one—except within the well-classifiedinstitutions; the second reaction was to recognize itsCorrespondence and offprint requests to: Prof. J.-P. Wauters.Email: jean-pierre.wauters@insel.chNephrol Dial Transplant (2008) 23: 62–64doi:10.1093/ndt/gfm279Advance Access publication 12 October 2007 The Author [2007]. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of ERA-EDTA. All rights reserved.For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.orgutility, but to suggest other, more refined tools toassess academic quality; and the third reaction was totake local measures to try to perform better for thefollowing assessment.Since 2004, SJTU and THES have conducted regularfeedback meetings and discussions to improve thequality indicators and their respective weight [8,9]. TheTHES argued that their improved standards proposea reasonable assessment of the quality of an institutionin the four domains of research quality, graduateemployability, teaching quality and internationaloutlook.While the top 10 ranked institutions do not come as asurprise, with prestigious USA and UK institutions atthe forefront, it is worth noting that 41 out of the top100 are European, in comparison with 32 USA,14 Asian and 7 Australian institutions (Table 1 onthe NDT website THES ranking of the World top 50Biomedical Faculties). Within Europe, above all theUK, but also France, Germany and, among the smallercountries, Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland andAustria are at the top; in contrast, Ireland and theSouthern European countries are less well ranked.Globally, some European countries are classifiedbetter than others: in the top 200, the Netherlands rank10 out of a global 13 universities (77%), Switzerland7/12 (58%), Australia 17/37 (46%), Belgium 3/8 (38%)and the USA only 54/261 (21%) [10].Despite recent improvements, certain criticismspersist with regard to the 2006 classifications: (i) theweight given to hard sciences when compared withhumanities, the arts and social sciences; (ii) the biasagainst non-English articles and/or publications innon-article forms (book chapters, national reports,conference proceedings); (iii) the heterogeneity of thedata used (type of staff, with different teaching orresearch activities, level of staff, including onlyprofessors or all researchers, inclusion/exclusion ofnative-born students who are non-national due toforeign parentage) (iv) the bibliometric shortcomingsdue to citation bias and/or different or missinginstitutional names (hospital or university-based,departments or research units without institutionalmention, language used) (v) the case of institutionsthat are incomplete (in particular without Sciencesand/or Medicine areas), or are merging, splitting.In addition, while a peer review process includingover 3500 reviewers worldwide is certainly a valuabletool, some prejudice may still exist through peerconservatism and institutional reputation favoured byage, size, name and country biases (the names ofHarvard, Oxford, Cambridge or MIT vs other highperforming, but less recognized institutions).Again, based on this type of feedback, steps arecontinuously taken to adapt the indicators by in-depthstatistical correlation analysis and proposals forimprovements [11].Present trends and consequences(i) The first observation is that, despite the scepticismof several university leaders and ongoingcontroversies on the retained indicators, univer-sity ranking is here to stay. There is a globalexpansion of access to HE, an appeal for market-type funding at national governmental levels anda market-type inter-institutional competition, notonly to attract good students and researchers butalso to obtain national and internationalrecognition.(ii) Ranking from University to Faculty levelThe present ranking favours comprehensive univer-sities, in particular those with technological, naturaland/or medical sciences, vs smaller, more specializedones. In addition, most universities are not uniformlyexcellent, but internally diverse with varying goals,missions or staffing per discipline. Therefore, the needfor an international ranking within disciplines becomesmore and more apparent. For the first time in 2006,THES and SJTU also published the ranking of the top100 biomedical faculties [9].(iii) Improvement of data construction and collectioninstrumentsEven if more academic peers from a wider range ofcountries participate in recent THES surveys and theopinion of international employers is expanding, theweight of expert bias remains high. Can the quality ofteaching be estimated worldwide solely by the faculty/student ratio and by the internationalization of staffand students? Clearly, there is a need for improvementof the data construction and collection instruments.(iv) Institutional steps towards quality improvementBy giving the results for each of the 6 indicators,SJTU and THES allow the institutions to diagnosetheir strong and weak points. At both institutional andfaculty levels, some simple directives might presentimmediate beneficial results: standardize institutionalnames in the publications, publish more in the rightplaces and/or journals with high impact factors,Table 1. The 2006 university ranking indicators and their respectiveweight (a) in the Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU) ranking (8)and (b) in the Times Higher Education Supplement (THES)ranking [9]a. SJTU rankingAlumni of institution Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals 10%Staff of institution Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals 20%Highly cited researchers in 21 subject categories 20%Articles published in Nature and Science 20%Articles in Science Citation Index andSocial Science Citation Index20%Academic performance vs size of an institution 10%b. THES rankingEvaluation by academic peers 40%Evaluation by employers in the region 10%Citation index last 5 years publications/Faculty member 20%Faculty staff/students ratio 20%Foreign faculty staff in % of total 5%Foreign students in % of total 5%A new tool for the evaluation of higher education in Europe 63develop more links with regional employers, have moreteaching staff and become more international.But, as recently quoted by the President of aJapanese university: ‘a farmer wanting to breed a bigcow should focus more on nutrition than the weighingscales’ [12].(v) The risks of rankingIn a market-led world, a crude hierarchy of rankingthreatens to prevail. This effect is multiplied by the useof ranking results as an ‘objective’ marketing andpublic relations tool. International rankings mayrapidly widen the gap between a few increasinglyprivileged institutions, funded by governmental andprivate initiatives, and others, which become merelyeducation mills for local communities. Ranking mightultimately have a de-equalizing effect, in particularin European almost exclusively state-funded HEinstitutions.It should also be recognized that, even with the bestpossible indicators, the quality of an institutionmay not only depend on academic and researchperformance, but that the quality of education, library,administration, peculiar regional or national missions,campus culture and quality of life should also,whenever possible, be considered.Taken globally, academic nephrologists should beaware that ranking lists will definitely change theworldwide university landscape. They are complemen-tary to the classical HE quality assessment tools(reports, external visits) set up at national or regionallevels, but are by far an easier, cheaper, more rapid andultimately popular instrument. As highlighted recently,‘global vision ensures healthy competition’ [9].Conflict of interest statement. None declared.References1. De Maret P. Universities in the World: what for? In The World-Class University and Ranking: Aiming beyond status.In: Sadlak Jan, Cai Liu Nian, eds. Unesco-Cepes 2007; 312. Leiden University 2nd international symposium on Ranking.2-3 Feb 2007, Leiden, The Netherlands.,http://www.leiden.edu/rankings/>3. SJTU Academic ranking of World Universities. ShanghaiJiao Tong University, Institute of Higher Education.< HYPERLINK ‘‘http://ed.sjtu.edu.cn/ranking.htm’’ http://ed.sjtu.edu.cn/ranking.htm>4. Times Higher Education Supplement. World UniversityRankings: The World’s Top 200 Universities. The TimesHigher Education Supplement. 5 November 2004<HYPERLINK ‘‘http://www.thes.co.uk/worldrankings’’http://www.thes.co.uk/worldrankings5. Berlin Principles on Ranking of Higher Education Institutions.Berlin May 20th 2006. <HYPERLINK ‘‘http://www.ihep.org’’http://www.ihep.org>6. Center for Higher Education, Germany <HYPERLINK: http://www.che.de/cms/’’>7. Ranking of World Universities in the Web <HYPERLINK‘‘http://www.webometrics.info/’’>8. Liu Nian C, Cheng Y. Academic Ranking of World Universities:methodologies and problems. In The World-Class Universityand Ranking: Aiming beyond status. In: Sadlak Jan, Cai LiuNian, eds. Unesco-Cepes 2007; 1759. THES World University Rankings. Who’s up? Who’s down?The Times Higher Education Supplement. 6 October 2006<HYPERLINK ‘‘http://www.thes.co.uk/worldrankings’’>10. Van der Wende M. The Challenges of UniversityRanking. 1st Leiden University Symposium on Ranking,How can we identify the best universities in the world?16th Feb 2006>11. Van Raan AF. Challenges in the ranking of universities.In The World-Class University and Ranking: Aimingbeyond status. In: Sadlak Jan, Cai Liu Nian, eds. Unesco-Cepes 2007; 8712. Monte Cassim. 2nd Meeting of the Asia-Pacific Association forInternational Education, Singapour, 7–9 March 2007.Received for publication: 27.3.07Accepted in revised form: 13.4.0764 A. Charon and J.-P. Wauters

University ranking: a new tool for the evaluation of higher education in Europe

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