What criteria are used in the popular rankings?

It is known that the ranking of a university is simply a rough estimate of what position it occupies in comparison to other rival institutions. In some cases, universities can obtain a different ranking according to different criteria and forms of analysis. When ranking universities, most look for major factors such as quality of education, quality of research, entry requirements and overall satisfaction with the particular institution. Rankings tend to be dependent on the faculty, reputation, the age of the institute or even the scores the students at the particular school achieve.

The following is a summary of the criteria used in the THE, QS and Shanghai rankings. Information such as weightage of each criterion is made available at the discretion of each ranking consultancy, and can vary based on variable filters in the control of the viewing public.

THE

13 performance indicators are grouped into five areas:

Teaching: the learning environment (worth 30 per cent of the overall ranking score)
Research: volume, income and reputation (worth 30 per cent)
Citations: research influence (worth 30 per cent)
Industry income: innovation (worth 2.5 per cent)
International outlook: staff, students and research (worth 7.5 per cent).

QS

Core Criteria

· teaching

· employability

· research

· internationalisation

Learning Environment

· facilities

· online/distance learning

Advanced Criteria

· culture

· innovation

· engagement

· access

Shanghai Ranking

The Shanghai Ranking considers every university that has any Nobel Laureates, Fields Medalists, Highly Cited Researchers, or papers published in Nature or Science.

Quality of Education	Alumni of an institution winning Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals	10%
Quality of Faculty	Staff of an institution winning Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals	20%
Quality of Faculty	Highly cited researchers in 21 broad subject categories	20%
Research Output	Papers published in Nature and Science*	20%
Research Output	Papers indexed in Science Citation Index-expanded and Social Science Citation Index	20%
Per Capita Performance	Per capita academic performance of an institution	10%
Total		100%

CUG

· student satisfaction

· research assessment

· entry standards

· staff ratio

· services expenditure

· facilities expenditure

· good honours

· graduate prospects

· completion

In conclusion, the Shanghai Ranking is more focused on research- centric institutions and those that achieve excellence in the fields of science and technology. Meanwhile, THE publicises its focus on the quality of teaching in comparison to the QS rankings. Nevertheless, QS is seen as the best point of reference by many international students, due to a wide range of criteria that encompasses many unquantifiables in the learning environment. The CUG is UK-centric and consists of mostly quantifiable criteria, spanning both students and academics.

How To Understand University Rankings

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