The use of different rankings give an orientation about the quality of an institution in higher education. Though the rankings are in fact not valid and reliable the use of different rankigs is an option to get some information about the reputation (and the quality) of a foreign university. Especially in countries that are not really involved in international accreditation procedures the comparison of rankings could be helpful (but please note: the accreditation from an international accreditation agency is the much more serious indicator about the quality of the university, school or faculty; relevant information you will in the chapter "accreditation" on this website).
Most of the rankings will list institutions in higher education by disciplines. Only a few rankings will focus on the institution as an entity. One of the institutional rankings is published by the Shanghai Jiao Tong University (ARWU) and its focus is the reseach output of the respective institution. The Times HIgher Education Supplement THES and a private agency called Quacquarelli Symonds Limited QS are publishing various institutional (with total of about 600 universities) and subject oriented rankings. THES publishs the socalled "Top 200" universities. QS is a good example for taking rankings as strategy in mixing serious profit expectations (realized via education fairs, advertising, consulting etc.) with information (on a rather mediocrate level). Another institutional ranking is based on the attractivness of the website(s) of the respective university and is called webometrics.
Most of the rankings are related to subjects and/or countries. For quite some disciplines like Business/Management, Natural and Social Sciences, Engineering etc.; one may find national and international rankings (the international ranking cover quite often more the industrial countries or may have focus on Northamerica or Europe). Here ony we may list some rankings with a relative broader reach; national rankings you will have to find online.
In Business/Management wellknown rankings are:
Business Week,
Financial Times,
Economist,
US-News
Wall street Journal
Related to the subject and the publisher these rankings focus in a certain way on the U.S.A. and the english speaking world. A comparative description of rankings in Business/Management you will find under B-School. A rather new attempt to establish a kind of global ranking in Business/Management Studies is eduniversal; in this ranking a group of experts nominates for all countries the respective best Business Schools of a country and the total of nominated institutions is limited to 1.000 worldwide. Though this is not really a ranking (with ranks from 1-1.000) the nomination could be an orientation about the quality of a Business School or faculty. You may download the eduniversal list of Business Schools from 2008 as pdf.
A special ranking with a focus on research is based on publications in 24 selected journals; this ranking is published by the School of Management at the UT Dallas (and for the english speaking world it's definitivly more serious than many other Business or MBA rankings).
In Design you may find a few rankings only and the most popular is the worldwide ranking of Design Schools by Business Week.
In Engineering you may find very few global rankings and we will not recommend a publisher. Nevertheless you may find via universityportal.net a socalled world university ranking of engineering online (but please note: authors and the sources of this portal are not clear). |
