aProf. Dr Frank Ziegele

Director / Project Leader

Centre for Higher Education / U-Multirank

@UMultirank 2@UMultirank

U-Multirank – discussing the first release

and data collection

Prof. Dr. Frank Ziegele

Brussels, Wednesday, 25 June 2014

Presented by:

www.umultirank.org

@UMultirank

Part One

U-Multirank, why and how

Part Two

The web tool

Part Three

Launching U-Multirank

Part Four

What’s to come

3

Agenda

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@UMultirank

U-Multirank – why and how

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Agenda

Part One

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Why U-Multirank?

Dr. José Joaquín Brunner, Director Cátedra UNESCO de

Políticas Comparadas de Educación Superior, Chile,

“U-Multirank is a great instrument for students, faculty,

the public and policy makers.”

Dr. Simon Marginson, Professor of International Higher Education at the

Institute of Education, The University of London,

“U-Multirank gives students and other higher education

stakeholders much more information to work with in

making considered decisions.”

provide information for diverse needs for choosing study

programmes, making strategic plans, etc. (informed decisions)

@UMultirank@UMultirank 6

Why U-Multirank?

diversity of profiles and missions: make it transparent and

understandable, at the moment not visible

Prof. David D. Dill, Professor Emeritus of Public Policy

University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, USA,

“U-Multirank permits students and academic staff to

compare institutions of similar missions and types…”

Jamie Merisotis, President and CEO at the Lumina Foundation, USA,

“There is a profound need for more accessible, easily

understood information on the performance of higher

education. … Significant progress in these efforts has

been made by U-Multirank.”

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Why U-Multirank?

make performance transparent also beyond the research

function of the university (5 dimensions)

Fernando M. Galán, Vice-Chairperson of the European Students Union (ESU)

“U-Multirank will be an extremely useful tool for

students all over the world, being the first global

ranking that includes in a serious manner the

teaching and learning dimension.”

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U-Multirank - how?

the basic principles: multi-dimensional (without composite

scores), user driven, multi-level (incl. field-based rankings)

Andreas Schleicher, Director Education and Skills and Special Advisor on Education

Policy at the OECD,

“With a first-of-its-kind multi-dimensional approach to comparing

institutional performance, U-Multirank is now putting students and

the public into the driver’s seat of determining which universities are

doing well on what and why.”

Professor Sir Howard Newby, Vice-Chancellor, University of Liverpool, UK,

“U-Multirank provides an elegant solution to a problem which

undermines conventional rankings. It does not seek to weight

different activities of a university but allows users to devise their

own ranking according to what they believe is important."

@UMultirank

The web tool

(live demonstration)

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Agenda

Part Two

@UMultirank

Launching U-Multirank (findings)

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Agenda

Part Three

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universities are included with publicly available data850

of the 879 universities have provided comprehensive data500

faculties/departments are included in the four field based

rankings (physics, electrical and mechanical engineering, business studies)

1,000

study programmes within these faculties are included5,000

students completed the student satisfaction survey60,000

70 countries have universities in U-Multirank

@UMultirank

U-Multirank 2014 is the most comprehensive international data comparison in higher education

Alex Usher, President of Higher Education Strategy Associates (HESA),

Canada

“U-Multirank is the most global, most diverse and least reductive ranking

ever.”

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Worldwide

coverage

In 2014, 62% of U-Multirank universities are from

Europe, 17% from North America, 14% from Asia

and 7% from Africa, Latin America and Oceania

PhD-awarding

institutions

+

universities of

applied sciences

small

+

large universitiesspecialised

institutions

+

comprehensive

universitiesold (pre 1870)

+

young institutions

(after 1980)

@UMultirank

U-Multirank offers a global view of a large variety of university profiles

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Many univs. have

specific strengths

No univ. has

“across the board”

“A” scores

Around 100 univs.

have a wide range

(>10) of “A”

scores

Very few univs.

with no “A” scores

On individual indicators performance

differences between univs. are clearly

visible

300 univs. never before seen in

global rankings. Of these, 30 have

more than 10 “A” scores

@UMultirank

U-Multirank shows a wide

distribution of “A” scores

“A” scores per

univ.

% of univs.

0 2 %

1 to 5 43 %

5 to 10 43 %

11 to 15 10 %

16 to 22 2 %

Tom Boland, Chief Executive of the Higher Education Authority, Ireland,

“U-Multirank demonstrates very well that different universities have different kinds of strengths.”

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The difference in university

profiles becomes visible

You can’t say that one university is better than the other!

You can‘t find the world‘s top 100!

@UMultirank

• “Interdisciplinary publications” is a new performance

measure introduced within U-Multirank

• Almost 90% of universities have scores in a fairly narrow band

of around 7% to 11% of their total publication output being

interdisciplinary

• Only 17 universities perform better than this general pattern.

None of the top five scorers on this indicator appear in other

global rankings

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An example

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Analyses by indicator reveal information about the state of higher education

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And many

special

analyses…

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Comparisons

per

university

profile

Comparisons

per dimension

Comparisons

per country

Comparisons

per indicator

Comparisons

per

field/discipline

@UMultirank

U-Multirank offers a wealth of information and the potential for many more analyses

Thomas D. Parker, Senior Associate at the Institute for Higher Education Policy, Washington, USA

“U-Multirank is the ‘thinking man’s ranking’. Until now, rankings have been somewhere between bad

journalism and bad science, and we’re beginning to see much more serious work.”

@UMultirank

• cost of data collection differs largely (according to

implemented data systems)

• many indicators without problems, high degrees of

completeness

• difficult indicators: graduate unemployment, internships in the

region, degree theses with local companies (also definition of

“region”)

• some challenges with response rates to student surveys

(parallel surveys, effort to use NSS data); if response is too

small we do not show data (statistical checks)

• intensive communication loops

• challenges of institutional structures (mergers, internal)17@UMultirank

Experiences with data

collection

@UMultirank

What’s to come

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Agenda

Part Four

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U-Multirank will be

extended in 2015

+ 150 institutions

+ 3 new fields

(psychology,

computer science

and medicine)

Current sample of 879 institutions

U-Multirank 2015 release

in March 2015

If you

want to

join:

until end

of July

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What does participation

entail?

• We ask for participation in data collection• Institutional data (update!) – including profile indicators

• Field-based data (new fields)

• Student survey (new fields)

• In addition we will use publicly available data from other sources• Bibliometric data

• Patent data

• No monetary costs to participate

• No withdrawal after final data checks (until next update)

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• Summer 2014: Registration and data collection

• August 2014: Registration closes

• October 2014: 1st round of data verification

• November 2014: 2nd round of data verification

• Winter 2014/2015: Data analysis and calculations

• February 2015: Student survey closes

• March 2015: Results are launched

2015 timeline

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U-Multirank will continuously

develop – examples 2014/15

• Adaptation to user experiences

• user guidancedevelopment of

web tool

• reduction of mapping indicators (e.g.

self-reported bibliometric)development of

indicators

• data coherence checks directly built

into questionnaires (efficiency)

development of

data collection

tools

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• For more information on U-Multirank visit us, at www.umultirank.org.

• Contact:

• info@umultirank.org

• +49 (0) 5241 9761 58

• Like/follow us:

• /U-Multirank

• @UMultirank

• @Umulitrank

More information/Contact

@UMultirank 24@UMultirank

U-Multirank – discussing the first release

and data collection

Prof. Dr. Frank Ziegele

Brussels, Wednesday, 25 June 2014

Presented by:

www.umultirank.org