University Rankings: What They Are for and How They Differ?

South Ural State University, being a member of the project on competitiveness enhancement of the top Russian universities among the world’s leading research-and-education centres (Project 5-100), pays much attention to working on improving its standing in international and national university rankings. The Academic Rankings Promotion  at the SUSU International Office has decided to share on what university rankings are in essence, what they are needed for, as well as what the differences between various rankings are.

In the modern world, it is a common thing to assess the leading universities by rating them. The English word rating is a derivative from the verb to rate meaning to assess, make an evaluation. Thus, a rating is a numerical or positional indicator, showing the importance or value of a certain object or phenomenon. As a rule, this list is drawn up based on the results of expert research or audience survey. Most often, a special parameter is taken for the ranking against which leaders are compared, and winners are revealed.

The techniques of building various university rankings, both national and international ones, differ from each other. When drawing up a rating, every organisation selects the priority fields of activity of a university, and develops the calculation techniques with setting the efficiency indices of the organisation.

It is impossible to imagine any modern and keeping-up-with-the-times university without a clear strategy of internationalization, mainly aiming at entering the global market of educational services. Improving the quality of graduates’ training provides a university with an opportunity to be listed in international rankings and at the same time attract foreign students and academics. And potential international enrolees and their parents, as well as foreign professors, choose their university namely taking into account the fact of its being listed in an international ranting. In this case ranking is an tool helping compare educational institutions against a certain approved set of indicators.

The most reputable international university rankings include: QS (Quacquarelli Symonds), THE (Times Higher Education), and ARWU (Shanghai Ranking).

The authors of the QS World University Rankings evaluate universities against six indices: research activity, teaching, employers’ opinion and career potential, number of international students and academics. The QS pays special attention to university reputation within the academic environment.

Times Higher Education World University Rankings is named among the most authoritative world university ratings. Its advantage is in the improved methodology, which was developed jointly with the readers and the editorial staff of Times Higher Education magazine and Thomson Reuters company. THE studies universities from more than 79 countries and selects the world’s top universities with consideration to their quality of teaching and research activity, level of spreading knowledge and innovations. Also, the efficiency of universities and the quality of their material base is assessed by the THE experts based on the financial indicators.

Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU), also known as Shanghai Ranking, is drawn up by the Asian agency ShanghaiRanking Consultancy. This rating focuses on research and academic activity of universities, in order to lower the influence of the peculiarities of national systems of education on the final evaluation results. Over 1,200 universities participate in the survey, and only 500 of them get to be listed among the world’s top universities. This ranking would be especially informative for those planning their careers in science.

Last year, for the first time SUSU was listed in one of the three world university rankings – QS, and occupied a place within the range of 801-1000 among the most successful world universities. And all in all, there are more than 30 thousand institutions of higher education around the world.

For updated standing of SUSU in the rankings, please visit this page.

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