Brussels, June 2, 2009. European Commission awarded a contract to design and test a new multi-dimensional global university ranking system to CHERPA – the Consortium for Higher Education and Research Performance Assessment.

European countries have long been concerned about the performance of their universities in the world's two major rankings. They place part of the blame on the ranking systems themselves, which they complain put too much emphasis on research and institutional size, and too little on teaching and subject disciplines.

The European ranking system will be independent, "robust" and measure higher education's core functions of research, teaching and outreach, says the tender's terms of reference. It will cover all types of higher education institutions in and outside Europe - particularly in North America, Asia and Australia - and will enable comparisons and benchmarking of similar institutions at the institutional and field levels.

The basic approach underlying the project is to compare only institutions which are similar and comparable in terms of their missions and structures. Therefore the project is closely linked to the idea of a European classification (“mapping”) of higher education institutions developed by CHEPS. The feasibility study will include focused rankings on particular aspects of higher education at the institutional level (e.g., internationalization and regional engagement) on the one hand, and two field-based rankings for business and engineering programmes on the other hand.

The project will help institutions better position themselves and improve their development strategies, quality and performance. It will enable stakeholders, especially students, to make informed choices between institutions and programmes - which existing rankings do not do because they focus only on research and entire institutions.

The field-based rankings will each focus on a particular type of institution and will develop and test a set of indicators appropriate to these institutions. The rankings will be multi-dimensional and will – like the CHE ranking - use a grouping approach rather than simplistic league tables. In contrast to existing global rankings, the design will compare not only the research performance of institutions but will include teaching & learning as well as other aspects of university performance.

CHERPA is a European network of leading institutions in this field: the CHE – Centre for Higher Education Development (Gütersloh, Germany), the Center for Higher Education Policy Studies (CHEPS) at the University of Twente (Netherlands), the Centre for Science and Technology Studies (CWTS) at Leiden University (Netherlands), and the research division INCENTIM at the Catholic University of Leuven (Belgium). Our fifth partner in the project is the Observatoire des Sciences et des Techniques (OST) in Paris. The European Federation of National Engineering Associations (FEANI) and the European Foundation for Management Development (EFMD) are also associated with the project.

Contact Persons:
For CHE: Prof. Dr. Frank Ziegele, e-mail: This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
For CHEPS: Prof. Dr. Frans van Vught, e-mail: This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

More information:
www.che-concept.de/cms/?getObject=302&getNewsID=983&getCB=309&getLang=en
www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=20090605131129195