I'm glad somebody's noticed

Uwe Brandenburg, Managing Director of CHE Consult in Times Higher Education:


"Frankly, I think the success of certain institutions in rankings is more to do with the rankings’ methodology than anything else. They inevitably favour factors that are statistically more likely to be found among certain universities than others."

Ranking Rankings 1: Stability

Updated 13/03/16, 15/03/16

Making a start on ranking global university rankings, here is the average change in position of the top 20 twenty universities in 2014 in seven global university rankings between 2014 and 2015.

Note: both QS and THE introduced major methodological changes in 2015.

The table refers only to the top 20. Things might (or might not) be different if the top 100 or 500 were considered.

The Shanghai ARWU and URAP  are so far well ahead  of the others for stability.

Rankings	Mean position change of  top 20 universities 2014-15
Shanghai Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU)	0.30
Center for World University Rankings (CWUR) (Jeddah)	0.40
University Ranking By Academic Performance (URAP) (Middle East Technical University)	0.55
THE World University Rankings	2.10
Round University Rankings (Russia)	2.35
QS World University Rankings	3.50
Webometrics	8.85

News Lite from Times Higher

The mainstream media in the UK and parts of Europe is getting very excited about the latest ranking from Times Higher Education, the top  200 European universities.

There is nothing new here. THE have just pulled the European universities out of last year's world rankings.

Here are some of the headlines that have greeted the remarkable revelations.



Leicester Mercury

Leicester Mercury University of Leicester among the best in Europe

Google News
Quarter of top 200 European universities are in UK - league table

Wessex Scene

University of Southampton Ranked Amongst Top 50 Universities in Europe

World News Online

Edinburgh University ranked among best in Europe

Myinforms
Dundee University 'on a global scale' after European rankings accolade

Bailiwick Express
A quarter of Europe's top 200 universities are in the UK

Flanders Today

KU Leuven in top 12 of Times Higher Education ranking

In-Cyprus
UCy among the top 200 Unis, according to Times

The Tab
UCL ranked 5th best university in Europe

Plymouth Herald
Westcountry universities carve out a place in elite list

Shanghai Daily
Oxford, Cambridge top rankings of European universities