World Top 20 Project

The International Rankings Expert Group (IREG) has produced an inventory of international rankings that is testimony to the enormous interest in comparing and classifying universities around the world.

In addition to those rankings that were included there are several "also rans", rankings that were not counted because they included only one indicator, had been published only once or provided insufficient  information about methodology .

One of  these is the World Top 20 Project whose Executive Director and founder is Albert N Mitchell II. The website claims to rank 500 universities according to seven criteria and to use data from institutional databases and educational publications to construct eight regional rankings. The scores are then compared with those from the US News Best Global Universities, the THE World University Rankings, the QS World University Rankings, and the Center for World University Rankings to select the global top twenty.

The top five universities in each region are listed. Most seem quite sensible -- Cape Town is first in Africa, Tokyo in Europe, Harvard in North America and Cambridge in Europe -- but there are no Mexican universities in the top five in central America.

It is interesting that this site has included CWUR rather than the Shanghai ARWU in the big four world rankings. Could this be the start of a new trend?

There is no information about ranks or scores for the various indicators or details about the sources of data. It is also difficult to see how information about things like career development facilities, disability access and low-income outreach could be collected from the universities mentioned. 

Unless further information about sources and methods appears, it seems that there is no need to discuss these rankings any further