U-Multirank, the new global university ranking, was released online on Tuesday May 13. This unique new tool for comparing university performance currently includes information on more than 850 higher education institutions, more than 1,000 faculties and 5,000 study programmes from 70 countries. It is the first international comparison to include all types of higher education institutions. U-Multirank is an independent ranking led by a consortium headed by Professor Dr. Frans van Vught of the Center for Higher Education Policy Studies (CHEPS) at the University of Twente.
U-Multirank takes a different approach to existing global rankings of universities; it is multi-dimensional and compares university performance across a range of different activities grading them from “A” (very good) to “E” (weak). It does not produce a league table of the world’s “top” 100 universities based on composite scores. Instead, it allows users to identify a university’s strengths and weaknesses, or the aspects that most interest them.
User-driven
“We are delighted to have been able to design and implement this new user-driven and multi-dimensional ranking that goes beyond simplistic league tables and that addresses many of the criticisms of existing global university rankings,” said Professor Dr. Frans van Vught, from the Center for Higher Education Policy Studies at the University of Twente in the Netherlands, one of the lead partners of the consortium.
Like with like
U-Multirank enables users to compare particular sorts of universities (“like with like”) in the areas of performance of interest to them. It indicates how universities perform by showing their position in five performance groups (A=“very good” through to E=“weak”) in each of 30 different areas. While comparisons using U-Multirank are user-driven, it does include three “readymade” rankings – on research, on the strengths of universities’ economic involvement and on Business Studies programmes.
Dimensions
The wide range of new indicators of performance cover five broad dimensions: teaching and learning, regional engagement, knowledge transfer, international orientation and research. Students and other stakeholders have played a major role in developing U-Multirank and the ranking has been tested by student organisations.
Partners
U-Multirank is an independent ranking prepared with seed funding from the European Union and led by a consortium headed by Professor Dr. Frans van Vught of the Center for Higher Education Policy Studies (CHEPS) at the University of Twente in the Netherlands and Professor Dr. Frank Ziegele of the Centre for Higher Education (CHE) in Germany. Other partner organisations include the Centre for Science and Technology Studies from Leiden University (CWTS), Catholic University Leuven, academic publishers Elsevier, the Bertelsmann Foundation, student advice organisation Push and software firm Folge 3. The consortium also works closely with a range of national ranking partners and stakeholder organisations.
