Academic Ranking of World Universities - Influence

Influence

As the first multi-indicator ranking of global universities, ARWU has attracted a great deal of attention from universities, governments and media. A survey on higher education published by The Economist in 2005 commented ARWU as "the most widely used annual ranking of the world's research universities." In 2010, the Chronicle of Higher Education called ARWU "the best-known and most influential global ranking of universities".

One of the factors in the significant influence of ARWU is that its methodology is said to look globally sound and transparent. EU Research Headlines reported the ARWU's work on 31st Dec 2003: "The universities were carefully evaluated using several indicators of research performance." Chancellor of Oxford University, Prof. Chris Patten, said "the methodology looks fairly solid ... it looks like a pretty good stab at a fair comparison." Vice-Chancellor of Australian National University, Prof. Ian Chubb, said "The SJTU rankings were reported quickly and widely around the world… (and they) offer an important comparative view of research performance and reputation." Margison (2007) also commented the ARWU ranking that one of the strengths of "the academically rigorous and globally inclusive Jiao Tong approach" is "constantly tuning its rankings and invites open collaboration in that." Philip G. Altbach named ARWU's "consistency, clarity of purpose, and transparency" as significant strengths.

The ARWU ranking and its content have been widely cited and applied as a starting point for identifying national strengths and weaknesses as well as facilitating reform and setting new initiatives. Bill Destler (2008), the president of the Rochester Institute of Technology, draw reference to the ARWU ranking to analyze the comparative advantages the Western Europe and US have in terms of intellectual talent and creativity in his publication in the journal Nature.

European commissioner of Education, Jan Figel, pointed out in an interview in 2007 that "if you look at the Shanghai index, we are the strongest continent in terms of numbers and potential but we are also shifting into a secondary position in terms of quality and attractiveness. If we don't act we will see an uptake or overtake by Chinese or Indian universities." Also, Enserink (2007) referred to ARWU and argued in a paper published in Science that "France's poor showing in the Shanghai ranking ... helped trigger a national debate about higher education that resulted in a new law... giving universities more freedom." The world leading think tank Rand Corporation used the ARWU ranking as evidence in their consultancy paper to the European Institute of Innovation and Technology.

In two subsequent research papers published by Academic Leadership (2009), then in an article published by the Times Higher Education (2009), Paul Z. Jambor of Korea University established the connection between any unfavorable image/reputation universities may develop (and/or their association, by country, to those universities linked to the wrongdoing) to a halt in their climb or even to a drop in their THE – QS World University Rankings. This is because 40% and 10% of THE – QS World Methodology is based on Academic Peer Review and Employer Review respectively. In essence, any unfavorable image developed by a group of universities, associated by country, tends to harm their collective rankings. For this reason, universities worldwide should seriously consider adhering to internationally accepted standards so that they do not run the risk of sliding in the ranks on the international front. Consequently, a number of critics consider this aspect of THE – QS World University Rankings unfair and even biased.

The new Times Higher Education World University Rankings (THE-Reuters), published since 2010 is based on a revised Methodology. In the Methodology of the THE-Reuters World University Rankigs, the 'Papers per research and academic staff' {at 4.5%} and the 'Citation impact (normalised average citation per paper)' {at 32.5%} indicators make it evident that a university's ranking heavily relies on the number and quality of research papers written by its faculty. With 95% of research papers written in English, the relationship between English language use and a university's subsequent ranking thus becomes ever more clear. Jambor highlights the connection between actual English use and university rankings in a pair of research papers respectively published by the US Department of Education: ERIC and Academic Leadership.