ARWU vs. Alternative ARWU Ranking: What are the Consequences for Lower Ranked Universities?

Abstract

Decision makers and government representatives use numbers in the process of policy making in various spheres of life (Porter, 1995). Higher education is just one of thoe that saw the introduction of scores into its assessment methods through university rankings (Daraio & Bonaccorsi, 2017). Since 2003 and the first global university ranking, the university rankings have proliferated. The three world-acknowledged and most often analysed rankings are the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU), the Times Higher Education (THE), and the Quacquarelli Symonds World University Ranking (QS). However, these rankings led to the creation of dozens separate rankings and subrankings: by region, by subject, by field and so on (Hazelkorn & Gibson, 2016). This information goes to show several facts: that there is a need for university rankings, that their scope is changing, and that university rankings have become a serious industry (Hazelkorn & Gibson, 2016). Therefore, the conclusion can be made that university rankings are here to stay (Nature News, 2007). Throughout the years, institutions that publish university rankings aimed to answer the needs of students, on one hand, and the needs of universities, on the other hand. One such case is the case of the Alternative ARWU ranking. Namely, the ARWU ranking tends to take into account the prestige of the institution by including indicators such as the number of alumni and staff who received the Nobel Prize or the Fields Medal. However, it is tough for an institution to receive any of them. On the other hand, if a university receives one of the two prestigious awards, its rank skyrockets in the next edition of the ranking. For example, the Toulouse School of Economics received its first Nobel prize in 2014 in Economic sciences and entered the ARWU ranking straight into group 201-300 in 2015. Similarly, the London School of Economics received its first Nobel Prize in 2010 and went from group 201-302 to group 102-150. Also, once a university has received the Nobel Prize or Fields Medal its rank position improves and stays constant for a certain period of time (Piro & Sivertsen, 2016). Many universities worldwide pointed such situations out to the Shanghai Ranking Consultancy and suggested an alternative ranking without the Award Factor (Alumni and Award indicators) (ARWU, 2014). Their valuable observation led to the creation of the Alternative ARWU ranking.

Shedding Light on the Doing Business Index: a Machine Learning Approach

“…Namely, the question, which arises, is whether one weighting scheme fits 50 and 500 entities? A recently conducted in-depth analysis of the ARWU and Alternative ARWU rankings which rank 500 entities (universities) showed that there are significant differences between groups of 100 universities and that the length of the ranked universities should be taken into account when creating a composite index (Maricic et al, 2017). Therefore, herein, we aim to expand the current literature on the topic.…”

“…Our research hypothesis is that one weighting scheme does not fit all entities when the composite index ranks a large number of entities. The hypothesis of the research is starting to attract attention within the scientific community (Maricic et al, 2017). Our proposed approach is to firstly divide entities into groups and secondly, to rank and weight them accordingly within each group.…”

A Sensitivity Analysis of ELECTRE Based Stepwise Benchmarking for Policy: the Case of EU Digital Agenda

“…They explained several potential directions to approach the robustness issue, such as defining the range for the possible rank of alternatives(Beynon and Barton, 2008) or by indicating various intensity measures of the dominance relation within the method(Ahn and Park, 2008). The importance of this line of research is not solely related to MCDA methods and it can be seen as a state of the art question in academia recently (for example ARWU ranking sensitivity analysis has been of interest in a number of studies such asDobrota & Dobrota, 2016;Maricic et al, 2017;Zornic et al, 2014).…”