Every year different rankings of universities are elaborated and
published by recognized organizations relate to the Higher Education and
Sciences. The main goal is to offer to students and general population an unbiased
view about the activity and recognition of universities all around the world,
on the base of measurable indicators like: the web presence and its impact,
students-teacher rate, the presence of international students and teachers, and
others.
To figure in those rankings is one of the biggest challenges
for most of the small and medium universities (Carnegie Classification),
because those do not have the resources and infrastructure needed to have a
great impact and visibility. Nevertheless, small and medium universities cannot
renounce to the prestige and visibility that the rankings offer.
The alternative to counteract the resources’ deficit is to
engage and motivate human resources, especially the faculty, with their
teaching and research activity, such that they maximize their potentiality.
The human resources play a decisive role, as is going to be
shown through the following analysis, on the indicators used for some of the
most prestigious rankings.
Analysis of some universities’
rankings:
The first ranking that is analyzed is the QS TOPUNIVERSITIES, based on six
indicators, which pointed to four different essential areas of universities’
performance: research, teaching, employability and internationalization.
The indicators and their weight in the final score are:
academic reputation (40%), employer reputation (10%), students – faculty ratio
(20%), citations per faculty (20%), international faculty ratio (5%) and
international students ratio (5%).
The academic reputation is indicator of the
recognition of the university’s name and the activity that the institution
makes. It is measured through surveys to Academics all around the world, where
they are asked about which are the institutions that, in their opinion, make a
better job in its knowledge field.
It is evident that an important influence in this academic
reputation is given by the number of citations by professor. As well the
published results of a research are more cited, more influence has in the
scientific and technological development of that particular field. The numbers
of citations of the professors of a specific university are indicating the
strongest of the research activity of that university.
The ratio student – faculty is important from the
point of view that let know which are the universities better equipped to
provide small classes, letting provide the students with a better attention to
their particular deficiencies and necessities. This personalized attention
drive the students to reach more skills, and once graduated be more
competitive.
The international professor’s ratio is a very
interesting indicator. International professors are usually invited to offer masterly
lectures, and postgraduate courses, increasing the prestige of the institution
and its faculty. Frequently these international experts come through research
projects that are develop together for several institutions and researchers,
and due to the personal relations with faculty member of a particular
university.
At least these four indicators that were analyzed are
directly related to the faculty quality and recognition, as well to the
motivation of the faculty to develop an intensive research activity, beyond of
the material and financial resources available at the institution.
The Times Higher
Education World University Ranking is developed in partnership with
ELSEVIER, which is one of the leaders’ institutions in providing scientific
information, publishing annually 350,000 scientific papers in about 2000
journals.
This ranking pointed its performance indicators in five
essentials areas: teaching (30%), research (30%), citations (30%), international
visibility (7.5%) and knowledge transfer to the industry (2.5%).
In the teaching indicator the two main roles are
played by the reputation of the institution (15%) and the ratio of Doctorate
faculty to total faculty members (6%). This indicator awards the level of
academic expertise of the faculty and the biggest financial investment that the
institutions do to hire this type of employees.
The research is measured through parameters like the
universities’ income due to research projects or Grants, financially supported
by third parts (6%) and the research’s productivity (6%), evaluated from the
volume of papers published in high impact and indexed journals.
The citation of the research activity of the faculty
is other essential part in the university ranking’s position, demonstrating
that the small and medium institutions interested in to figure as part of these
prestigious rankings should provide to its faculty with at least a minimum of
financial resources and time to develop research and publish the results.
A new aspect in this ranking is to consider the knowledge
transfer (2.5%) as part of the indicators. Knowledge transfer shows the
capacity of the university and its academic staff to help industry and services
companies through the innovation, inventions, and consulting. Through the
knowledge and Technology transfer, the university starts to attract funds from
the private and/or public sector alien to the university environment,
increasing the potentiality to develop more research and technology.
The Webometrics
Ranking of World Universities is an initiative of Cybermetrics Lab, a
research group affiliated to the High Council of Scientific Research of Spain.
This Web ranking or Webometrics is one of the biggest rankings of Higher
Education Institutions around the world.
The ranking is based over two main indicators: presence in
the web or visibility (50%) and activity (50%).
The visibility is measured through the number of links
that the web domain of the university receives from third parts. Those links
recognize the prestige of the institution, its academic role, the value of the
information that offers and the utility of its services. That indicator is not
determined only by the popularity of the link, but even more by its diversity.
The indicator activity is subdivided in three
indicators: presence (1/3 of the indicator’s weight) that consist in the
total of web pages, hosted in the main web domain of the university, that are
indexed for the biggest commercial search engines (Google, and others); the opening
(1/3) given by the global efforts to create institutional repositories of
researches (measured through Scholar Google); the excellence (1/3) that
considers the academic papers published in high impact international journals.
Again the human resources of the universities are going to
define, through their researches’ activity and publications, the position of
the university in the top of the ranking or not.
The Webometrics ranking considers more than 20,000
educational institutions in the world, and only at United States includes more
than 3,300 colleges and universities.
Recommended actions to motivate
the Faculty and increase the University’s potentiality
In order to succeed in a highly globalized and competitive
world, the universities must engage and motivate the faculty. Some actions that
can be recommended for this purpose are:
Make the faculty conscious of the main role they play in the
prestige, credibility and visibility of the educational institutions.
To encourage the faculty to increase their web presence
through the publications in scientific journals as well as publishing
monographs, online courses in free access platforms, writing opinion’s articles,
self-publishing, and others.
To provide the faculty with the financial resources and time
to develop researches, so as well support the redaction and presentation of
research project and Grants involving several institutions in order to attract external
financial support. The universities must consider hiring highly qualified
personnel as an investment instead as an expense.
To provide the faculty with tools and credentials needed to
establish strong connections with the local industry and services companies,
such that can increase the collaborations and with this the prestige and social
recognition of the institution.
To support and facilitate the aspirations of professional
growth, and development of its faculty, through Grants, scholarships or other
types of financial help.
To implement a “pay – for – performance” component that
incentive the Faculty to improve their work continuously, in order to achieve a
“threshold” or performance level needed to access the additional compensation.
The previous recommended actions are going to be analyzed in
more details in future publications.
References:
https://www.timeshighereducation.com/world-university-rankings/2016/world-ranking#!/page/0/length/25
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