Global University Rankings, an Alternative and Their Impacts

Abstract

Rankings have been debated in higher education since more than two decades, when the US News & World Report made an impact on the higher education community with its first college ranking. The debate reached new heights of intensity since global university rankings appeared, shortly after the turn of the century. This chapter will focus on the rise of those global university² rankings, and as I am a member of the team that developed U-Multirank (full disclosure), I will present U-Multirank as an alternative to the first three global university rankings: the Shanghai Academic Ranking of World Universities, the Times Higher Education (THE) World University Rankings and the QS World University Rankings. Besides methodological issues, in this chapter I will give attention to the impacts these rankings have, including U-Multirank. As the findings regarding impacts turn out to be not unequivocally positive, should we stop producing or reading them — will there be a fall of rankings?

The responsibility for the current text, including any remaining errors, lie with the author. The chapter, in particular the section on U-Multirank, could not have been written, however, without the work of his colleagues on the U-Multirank team, especially Frans van Vught, Frank Ziegele, Jon File, Frans Kaiser and Gero Federkeil.