Really Useful Rankings: The Lowest Ranked Universities in the World

University rankings are getting a bit predictable, especially at the top. The top university is either in California or Cambridge, Massachusetts (or once in another Cambridge somewhere). The top twenty will be nearly all US places with a few British. Some of the established rankers do try to liven things up a bit: Nanyang Technological University in the top twenty, Middle East Technical University in the top hundred, but that does not do much to relieve the tedium.

So I thought it might be interesting to find the lowest ranked universities in the world. The trouble is most rankings do not rank many institutions so the best place to look is Webometrics which tries to rank all the universities on the planet. Here are the 22 institutions ranked 23,892 by Webometrics which means they have no Presence, no Impact, no Openness and not one Google Scholar Citation. Whether their existence goes beyond a website to include buildings and people I'll leave for you to find out.

Instituto Oswaldo Cruz de Certificacao, Brazil
Faculdade des Americas, Brazil
Escuela Normal Prescolar Adolfo Viguri Viguri, Mexico
Universidad Continente Americano Celaya, Mexico
Colegio Universitario y Tecnologico del Noreste, Mexico
Benemerita Escuela Normal Federalizada de Tamaulipas, Mexico
Universidad Virtual Latinoamericano, Venezuela
Faculdade Zumbi dos Palmares, Brazil
Faculdade Vizcaya, Brazil
Mugla Vocational Higher School, Turkey
Higher Polytechnic School Zagreb, Croatia
Sadat Institute of Higher Education, Afghanistan
Saint Paul Institute, Cambodia
Zhangzhou Institute of Technology, China
Technological University Thanlyin, Myanmar
Abasyn University, Pakistan
Salipur College, India
Adusumilli Vijaya Group of Colleges, India
Kaboora Institute of Higher Education, Afghanistan
Madina Engineering College, India
Universidade Lueji A'Nkonde, Angola
Reseau Marwan, Morocco

The Goldman Sachs Rankings

From efinancialcareers

"Goldman Sachs recruits primarily from US Ivy League universities. This might sound entirely predictable, but Goldman does have some surprises in the places it recruits from. In Asia, for example, it recruits mostly from local universities. In the UK, it seems to draw most of its operations hires from Warwick.

Based on the 22,000 Goldman Sachs CVs in the eFinancialCareers CV database, we’ve created rankings of the top universities the bank hires from by sector and region.

Globally, the best university for getting into Goldman Sachs is the London School of Economics (LSE), our data suggests, followed by Columbia University and the University of Pennsylvania – both of which have a strong emphasis on financial services careers."

Globally the best places for a career with Goldman Sachs are:

1.  London School of Economics
2.  Columbia University
3.  University of Pennsylvania
4.  Princeton University
5.  Harvard University.

In the US they are:

1.  Columbia University
2.  University of Pennsylvania
3.  Princeton University
4.  Cornell University
5.  Harvard University.

In Asia they are:

1.  University of Hong Kong
2.  National University of Singapore
3.  Nanjing University
4.  London School of Economics
5.  Indian Institute of Technology (which one is not stated).

In Europe they are:
1.  London School of Economics
2.  Cambridge University
3.  Imperial College London
4.  Oxford University
5.  Warwick University.

Ranking Rankings Again

Magnus Gunnarsson of the University of Gothenburg has reminded me of a 2010 report which included an assessment of methodology based on IREG's Berlin principles.

There were 16 Berlin principles, 14 of which were given weighted subscores in the report. The values and weighting were determined  subjectively although the rankers were evidently well informed.

The Berlin principles were grouped in four categories, Purpose and Goals of Rankings, Design and Weighting of Indicators, Collection and Processing of Data and Presentation of Ranking Results. For more information see here.

The ranking of rankings  by methodology is as follows. It is obviously out of date.

Position	Ranking	Overall method score
1=	CHE (Germany)	3.10
1=	Webometrics	3.10
3	HEEACT (now Taiwan National University)	2.90
4	ARWU (Shanghai)	2.80
5=	High Impact Universities (Australia)	2.60
5=	Observatory (sustainable development)	2.60
7=	Scimago	2.40
7=	CWTS Leiden ranking	2.40
9	THE	2.30
10	Mines Paris Tech	2.20
11	QS	2.10
12	Rater (Russia)	1.70