European Union launches new university ranking system

After some six years’ deliberation and data collection, the European Union finally unveiled its own university ranking system this week.

U-multirank, compares data on 879 universities and colleges, 10,000 faculties and 5,000 study programmes across 74 countries.

The ranking will, “enable students to make more informed decisions about where to study and give us a more accurate picture of how universities perform”, said Androulla Vassiliou, Commissioner for Education at the launch.

“Two things make it very different from standard league tables,” said Frank Ziegele, a researcher at Germany’s Centre for Higher Education, one of the academics that worked on the €2 million project. “It runs on many multidimensional indicators and its ranking is user-driven.”

The novelty is that U-multirank is not a “top 100” horse race in the same vein as the big three league tables, the Shanghai Academic Ranking of World Universities, the Times Higher Education World University Rankings and the QS World University Rankings. Rather, users are able to tailor a personal ranking based on their priorities.

Students can use it to profile and compare universities, faculties and programmes out of 30 indicators in five areas: research, teaching and learning, international orientation, knowledge transfer, and regional engagement. Activities are assigned grades from A (very good) to E (weak).

In a crowded market, why do we need another ranking? “My problem with league tables is that they’re hiding the indicators,” says Ziegele. “We don’t give an overall performance measure in ours – we don’t aggregate until we get an overall score. We have created a flexible web tool where each user can create his or her own ranking.”

Concerned that Europe’s universities were doing so badly in global rankings, France proposed developing a European version back in 2008. The European Commission responded and will provide €2 million in seed funding for the U-multirank until 2015.

At the moment, 62 per cent of its featured universities are European. The proof of the pudding for many will be success in attracting institutions from elsewhere.

Ranking system ranked

It’s hard to say whether the project will really catch on beyond Europe though, says Ellen Hazelkorn, Director of research and enterprise at Dublin Institute of Technology.

"There are discussions going on with the Chinese but the real fish to catch is the US, and that will be very difficult,” she said.

In its current state U-multirank has very limited US data, drawn from bibliometric and patent databases which were probably used in order to beef up the geographic spread, she adds.

“I think U-multirank should concentrate on Europe and selling European higher education to its own students. This can encourage mobility and will be a good start,” Hazelkorn said.

Michael Owen, the vice-president of research and innovation at the Ontario Institute of Technology, was yesterday getting acquainted with the website. “So far I’m impressed and like the presentation,” he said.

Conventional university rankings will probably continue to exist, said Fernando M Galán Palomares, the vice-chair of the European Students’ Union, but the strength of U-multirank is “how it reflects the diversity of higher education by making an information tool based on individual interests and needs.”

He can see it becoming the first step for would-be students seeking information on their study options.

Criticisms of the system can be found back in 2012, when a UK House of Lords report said it was “not a good use of limited EU resources.”

Lesley Wilson, Secretary General of the European University Association (EUA), gave cautious approval to the system, welcoming the stated approach of U-multirank and how it highlights the, “rich diversity of European universities.” But she noted there are, “potential challenges with regards to several issues including data collection and the definition of indicators.”

Now that it has been launched, EUA looks forward to having the opportunity to look at the final tool in more detail and the different indicators used, she added.

Data holes

The online tool is very user friendly but there are some wrinkles in the data. For example, data on the employment rate of graduates from various bachelors and masters courses, is very patchy.

Another indicator with limited data is the number of graduates who have remained working in the region of their university.

The quality of data for some indicators is an issue, admits Frans van Vught, president of the European Center for Strategic Management of Universities, and a developer of the project. When building the database, there were some problems with universities self-reporting their data. “Here and there there were some anomalies that led us to go back to universities and say ‘that can’t be true’,” said van Vught.

Ziegele agreed. “The measure for the rate of unemployment – we knew this wouldn’t work,” he said. “Statistical offices have different ways of collecting this particular data. Whilst there are gaps, we left it in to be transparent and to send a signal to the EU and the OECD that the lack of standardised data is a problem.”

The data will stay unchanged for around two years before being updated again, said Ziegele. “We need a compromise, we don’t want to bother universities asking for more data,” he said.

Cédric Cheneviere, a researcher with the University of Leuven, thinks universities will really pay attention to the system. “The rankings are like polls: officially, who cares; unofficially, they are feared,” he said.

Some universities were disappointed with their scoring, admitted van Vught, without revealing which ones.

Looking ahead

There are similar developments around the world with governments in Australia, the UK and Catalonia putting institutional performance data online. The Obama administration is soon to launch a ratings scheme of its own.

“This is only the starting point,” said Ziegele, who will now turn his attention to convincing the under-represented countries to take part in U-multirank.

All European countries are in the ranking, except Luxembourg, which declined to participate. 

“Some universities for the first round told us ‘your idea sounds interesting but we don’t know what it is’,” said van Vught. “It’s the largest ranking in the world already and we hope to make it bigger. Some universities are already realising they need to be in, while others are coming back to me saying we have more data that needs to go in.”

“I think we can easily get more countries on board,” said Ziegele. However, it will be a challenge to collect data on African universities. 

The project is due to add three disciplines, medicine, psychology, and computer science, to the current four of physics, business, mechanical engineering, and electrical engineering.

In terms of future funding, the ranking could be taken on by a private company or run as a not-for-profit cooperation funded by foundations. The clear preference of the EU and the researchers involved is for the latter.

To see how your alma mater scored, visit here.