Thursday, September 18, 2014

QS World University Rankings 2014



Publisher

QS (Quacquarelli Symonds)



Scope

Global. 701+ universities.


Top Ten


PlaceUniversity
1MIT
2=Cambridge
2=Imperial College London
4Harvard
5Oxford
6University College London
7Stanford
8California Institute of Technology (Caltech)
9Princeton
10Yale



Countries with Universities in the Top Hundred


Country      Number of Universities
USA28
UK19
Australia8
Netherlands                                              7
Canada5
Switzerland4
Japan4
Germany3
China3
Korea3
Hong Kong3
Denmark2
Singapore2
France2
Sweden2
Ireland1
Taiwan1
Finland1
Belgium1
New Zealand1



Top Ranked in Region


North America 
MIT
AfricaUniversity of Cape Town
EuropeCambridge
Imperial College London
Latin AmericaUniversidade de Sao Paulo                                    
AsiaNational University of Singapore                                    
Central and Eastern Europe  Lomonosov Moscow State University                                   
Arab WorldKing Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals                                     
Middle EastHebrew University of Jerusalem                                  



Noise Index

In the top 20, this year's QS world rankings are less volatile than the previous edition but more so than the THE rankings or Shanghai ARWU. The top 20 universities in 2013 rose or fell an average of 1.45 places. The most remarkable change was the rise of Imperial College and Cambridge to second place behind MIT and ahead of Harvard.


RankingAverage Place Change
 of Universities in the top 20 
QS World Rankings 2013-20141.45
QS World Rankings 2012-20131.70
ARWU 2013 -2014 0.65
Webometrics 2013-20144.25
Center for World University Ranking (Jeddah)
2013-2014 
0.90
THE World Rankings 2012-20131.20


Looking at the top 100 universities, the  QS rankings  are little different from last year. The average university in the top 100 moved up or down 3.94 places compared to 3.97 between 2012 and 2013. These rankings are more reliable than this year's ARWU, which was affected by the new lists of highly cited researchers, and last year's THE rankings.

RankingAverage Place Change
 of Universities in the top 100 
QS World Rankings 2013-143.94
QS World Rankings 2012-20133.97
ARWU 2013 -2014 4.92
Webometrics 2013-201412.08
Center for World University Ranking (Jeddah)
2013-2014 
10.59
THE World Rankings 2012-20135.36




Methodology (from topuniversities)

1. Academic reputation (40%)

Academic reputation is measured using a global survey, in which academics are asked to identify the institutions where they believe the best work is currently taking place within their field of expertise.
For the 2014/15 edition, the rankings draw on almost 63,700 responses from academics worldwide, collated over three years. Only participants’ most recent responses are used, and they cannot vote for their own institution. Regional weightings are applied to counter any discrepancies in response rates.
The advantage of this indicator is that it gives a more equal weighting to different discipline areas than research citation counts. Whereas citation rates are far higher in subjects like biomedical sciences than they are in English literature, for example, the academic reputation survey weights responses from academics in different fields equally.
It also gives students a sense of the consensus of opinion among those who are by definition experts. Academics may not be well positioned to comment on teaching standards at other institutions, but it is well within their remit to have a view on where the most significant research is currently taking place within their field.

2. Employer reputation (10%)

The employer reputation indicator is also based on a global survey, taking in almost 28,800 responses for the 2014/15 edition. The survey asks employers to identify the universities they perceive as producing the best graduates. This indicator is unique among international university rankings.
The purpose of the employer survey is to give students a better sense of how universities are viewed in the job market. A higher weighting is given to votes for universities that come from outside of their own country, so it’s especially useful in helping prospective students to identify universities with a reputation that extends beyond their national borders. 

3. Student-to-faculty ratio (20%)

This is a simple measure of the number of academic staff employed relative to the number of students enrolled. In the absence of an international standard by which to measure teaching quality, it provides an insight into the universities that are best equipped to provide small class sizes and a good level of individual supervision.

4. Citations per faculty (20%)

This indicator aims to assess universities’ research output. A ‘citation’ means a piece of research being cited (referred to) within another piece of research. Generally, the more often a piece of research is cited by others, the more influential it is. So the more highly cited research papers a university publishes, the stronger its research output is considered.
QS collects this information using Scopus, the world’s largest database of research abstracts and citations. The latest five complete years of data are used, and the total citation count is assessed in relation to the number of academic faculty members at the university, so that larger institutions don’t have an unfair advantage.

5  6. International faculty ratio (5%)  international student ratio (5%)

The last two indicators aim to assess how successful a university has been in attracting students and faculty members from other nations. This is based on the proportion of international students and faculty members in relation to overall numbers. Each of these contributes 5% to the overall ranking results.

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