The Center for World University Rankings, currently based in the UAE, has published its World University Rankings since 2012. They are highly distinctive, including metrics that attempt to use objective public data to measure teaching and learning.
The current methodology comprises four indicators:
- Education; academic awards won by the university’s alumni (25% weighting)
- Employability; positions in public companies held by alumni (25%)
- Faculty; awards won by faculty members (10%)
- Research; including total number of research articles (10%), research articles in top-tier journals (10%), research articles in highly influential journals (10%), and citations (10%).
The top of the current ranking is dominated, as in previous years, by English-speaking universities. Harvard is in first place, followed by Massachusetts Institute of Technology, followed by Oxford, Cambridge, Oxford, Princeton, Pennsylvania, Columbia, Yale, and Chicago.
Asian, especially Mainland Chinese, institutions are badly underrepresented in the Education and Faculty metrics. There are no Mainland Chinese universities with any sort of score in the Faculty metric and only nine with a score for Education. Three institutions have a score for Faculty and twelve for Education.
These rankings provide interesting insights into the teaching aspects of university excellence. However, the clear bias against Asian higher education does undermine their validity and accuracy.
Source:
CWUR