Draft:National college and university rankings

College and university rankings order institutions in higher education based on factors that vary depending on the ranking. Rankings are typically conducted by magazines, newspapers, websites, governments, or academics. In addition to ranking entire institutions, specific programs, departments, and schools can be ranked. Some rankings consider measures of wealth, excellence in research, selective admissions, and alumni success. Rankings may also consider various combinations of measures of specialization expertise, student options, award numbers, internationalization, graduate employment, industrial linkage, historical reputation and other criteria.

There is much debate about rankings' interpretation, accuracy, and usefulness. The expanding diversity in rating methodologies and accompanying criticisms of each indicate the lack of consensus in the field. Further, it seems possible to game the ranking systems through excessive self-citations or by researchers supporting each other in surveys. UNESCO has questioned whether rankings "do more harm than good", while acknowledging that "Rightly or wrongly, they are perceived as a measure of quality and so create intense competition between universities all over the world".

China
University rankings in China are ordered by different standards and made by various organizations, including:


 * BCUR, by Shanghai Jiao Tong University
 * Wu Shulian, published in the name of the Chinese Academy of Management Science
 * Netbig, the higher education internet information company
 * CUAA, by Airuishen (a company) in the name of Chinese Universities Alumni Association, etc.

India
The National Institutional Ranking Framework is initiated by the Ministry of Human Resource Development of the Government of India, to rank all institutions of higher education in India. Magazines such as Youth Incorporated Magazine, India Today, Outlook, Mint, The Week, Dataquest, Careers360 and Electronics For You conduct annual rankings for the major disciplines.

Japan
The Times Higher Education Supplement (The Thes) is publishing Japan University Rankings once a year, using a balanced scorecard approach, with 16 individual performance indicators combining to create an overall score that reflects the broad strength of an institution. Data for the rankings come from a variety of sources. These include self-submitted data from the institutions as well as data gathered from Elsevier, Benesse Corporation, Nikkei Human Resources, the Japanese government and the Times Higher Education Academic Reputation Survey.

On the other hand, some of the ranking systems in Japan rank universities by the difficulty of their entrance exams, called "Hensachi". One example of such a ranking is Going broke universities - Disappearing universities by Kiyoshi Shimano. In addition to this, there's the other example of rankigs using "Hensachi", GTZ. It is released by Benesse Corporation and describes to which deviation value class (S1 to D3) each university belongs.

Japanese preparatory school Kawaijuku also released the Japan's Top 30 University Rankings in Natural Sciences and Technology for MEXT's GLOBAL 30 Project in 2001.

Pakistan
Pakistan's Higher Education Commission annually ranks domestic universities.

Philippines
Academic rankings in the Philippines are conducted by the Professional Regulation Commission and the Commission on Higher Education, based on accreditations, academic designations and the average passing rates in board tests.

South Korea
Korean Council for University Education, established in 2009, evaluates universities in South Korea.

Austria
Some Austrian universities, including all Austrian Universities of Applied Sciences, take part in the CHE University Ranking.

Bulgaria
The Bulgarian University Ranking System, maintained by the Bulgarian Ministry of Education, compares academic programs in accredited domestic higher education institutions. The system ranks programs based on more than 50 indicators, such as teaching and learning conditions, scientific research, career development opportunities, prestige, and material resources.

Denmark
In Denmark, the think-tank CEPOS conduct an annual survey and ranking of higher education at study program level and institution level, based on entry salary, career development, drop-out rates, and program completion rates.

France
Eduniversal provides rankings of undergraduate and graduate degrees of French universities in some areas.

Le Nouvel Observateur occasionally offer rankings of "Grandes écoles" and their preparatory schools, the "Prépas", and of universities' undergraduate degrees in some areas.

Germany
Since 1998, the Centre for Higher Education (CHE) has published the CHE University Ranking, a comprehensive ranking of German and Austrian universities.

The CHE also publishes a "ResearchRanking" showing the research strengths of German universities. The CHE ResearchRanking is based on the research-related data of the University Ranking.

Ireland
The Sunday Times ranks Irish universities based on a mix of criteria, including secondary school examination scores, graduation rates, staff-student ratio, research efficiency, accommodation, nontraditional students, athletics and sports facilities.

Italy
Every year, the newspaper La Repubblica, in collaboration with CENSIS, compiles a ranking of Italian universities. Furthermore, the ministerial Agency for the Evaluation of University and Research (ANVUR) publishes every five years a detailed analysis regarding the entirety of the higher education institutions in the country, with a range of grades from D to A.

North Macedonia
The Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) compiled a ranking of Macedonian Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) commissioned by the country's Ministry of Education and Science in February 2011 and released it on 16 February 2012. Nineteen qualified HEIs were included in the ranking. The ranking used 19 indicators of academic performance and competitiveness, covering major mission aspects of HEIs such as teaching, research and social service. It is the first university ranking in North Macedonia.

Netherlands
Most Dutch universities take part in the CHE UniversityRanking.

Poland
A popular ranking of Polish higher education institutions is annually published by education magazine Perspektywy.

Romania
The Ad Astra association of Romanian scientists ranked Romanian universities in 2006 and 2007.

Russian Federation
Several bodies rank Russian universities, including RIA Novosti / Forbes, independent rating agency RatER, Interfax (in cooperation with Ekho Moskvy) and the Russian journal Finance.

RIA Novosty / Forbes rankings are conducted under the supervision of Public Chamber of Russia in cooperation with State University – Higher School of Economics. This ranking is considered the most objective system. It covers 476 higher education institutions and is based on the average score of the Unified State Examination that is required to enter a university. The ranking has separate subrankings for different subjects and clusters of universities.

RIA Novosty rankings do not align with other local and international rankings such as Academic Ranking of World Universities and QS World University Rankings which take into account inherited reputation from the Soviet Union.

RatER publishes annual rankings based on representation of university graduates in governmental, education and business elite.

Interfax annually ranks "classical" (or multi-faculty) universities and higher education institutions specialising in law. Interfax' methodology quantifies several qualitative factors such as research, teaching standards, public opinion and social and international activity.

Finance produces an integrated ranking of higher education institutions specialising in economics and finance. The Journal uses the average score of the Unified State Examination, the number of CFO graduates and the consolidated turnover of companies where graduate CFOs are employed.

Spain
National rankings for Spanish universities include the "50 carreras" (50 degrees) from the "El Mundo" newspaper, the CSIC or the IAIF ranking of the UCM.

Switzerland
The swissUp Ranking ranked Swiss university and polytechnic students until 2004. The swissUp Ranking is no longer conducted. Some universities from the German-speaking part of Switzerland, such as ISFOA Lugano take part in the CHE UniversityRanking.

Turkey
The URAP Research Laboratory of the Middle East Technical University assesses academic output of Turkish universities, as well as about 300 institutes of higher education worldwide. Their methodology focuses only on article and citation indicators in an attempt to minimize the impact of subjective data.

Ukraine
Ukraine's Ministry of Education and Science performs official yearly university evaluations. Zerkalo Nedeli newspaper published the top 200–ranked Ukrainian universities in 2007. Kyiv Student Council ranks universities on criteria of student satisfaction.

United Kingdom
There are three major rankings of universities in the United Kingdom published by commercial companies: The Times and Sunday Times Good University Guide, The Complete University Guide and The Guardian University Guide. Since 2008, Times Higher Education has compiled a "Table of Tables" which combines the results of the 3 national league tables. For 2017, the top 5 universities were Cambridge University, Oxford University, University of St Andrews, and Imperial College London and Durham University in joint fourth.

The Research Excellence Framework was the successor to the Research Assessment Exercise in 2014. It is used by the UK government to evaluate the research quality of British universities and determine the distribution of future research funding. In 2014, the top five universities for research power as compiled by Research Fortnight were University of Oxford, University College London, University of Cambridge, University of Edinburgh and University of Manchester.

The Research Assessment Exercises (RAE) were the UK government's evaluation of research quality in British Universities. Each subject, called a unit of assessment, was ranked by a peer review panel. The rankings were used in the allocation of government funding. The last assessment was made in 2008. The RAE provided quality ratings for research across all disciplines. Panels used a standard scale for each submission. Ratings ranged from 1 to 5, according to the quantity of work that was judged to reach national or international levels of excellence. Participating institutions receive grants from one of the four higher education funding bodies in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The top three universities in the 2008 RAE exercise were London School of Economics, Cambridge University and Oxford University.

The Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA) assesses undergraduate teaching. QAA is an independent body established by the UK's higher education institutions in 1997. QAA was under contract to the Higher Education Funding Council for England to assess quality for English universities. This replaced Teaching Quality Assessments (TQAs) which aimed to assess the administrative, policy and procedural framework within which teaching took place and did not directly assess teaching quality. This inspection-based system was replaced by a system of information provision, including a national student survey. QAA publishes scores which have been used by the league table industry. The first Teaching Excellence Framework is to be published in 2017; this is a rating system (giving gold, silver or bronze ratings to higher education providers) rather than a ranking as such.

Canada
Maclean's, a Canadian news magazine, publishes an annual ranking of Canadian universities, called the Maclean's University Rankings. Ranking criteria include student body characteristics, classes, faculty, finances, library, and reputation. The rankings are split into three categories: schools that focus on undergraduate studies with few to no graduate programs, schools that have both extensive undergraduate studies and an extensive selection of graduate programs and schools that have a professional medical program and a selection of graduate programs.

The University of Calgary produced a formal study examining the ranking methodology, illuminating the factors that determined its rank and criticizing certain aspects of the methodology. The University of Alberta, the University of Toronto and University of Manitoba have expressed displeasure over the ranking system.

A notable difference between rankings in the United States and Maclean's rankings, however, is that Maclean's excludes privately funded universities. However, the majority of Canada's institutions, including the best-known, are publicly funded.

Beginning in September 2006, over 20 Canadian universities, including several of the most prestigious and largest universities such as the University of Toronto, University of British Columbia, University of Alberta, Concordia University, McMaster University and Dalhousie University, jointly refused to participate. University of Alberta president Indira Samarasekera wrote that Maclean's initially filed a "Freedom of Information" request but that it was "too late" for the universities to respond. Samarasekera further stated, "Most of [the universities] had already posted the data online, and we directed Maclean's staff to our Web sites. In instances where the magazine staff couldn't find data on our Web site, they chose to use the previous year's data."

Estudio Comparativo de Universidades Mexicanas
Mexican institutions have been compared in the Estudio Comparativo de Universidades Mexicanas (ECUM) produced within the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM). ECUM provides data on institutional participation in articles on ISI Web of Knowledge–indexed journals; faculty participation in each of Mexico's three-level National Researchers System (SNI ); graduate degrees within National Council of Science and Technology's (CONACYT) register of quality graduate programs; and number of academic research bodies (cuerpos academicos) according to the Secretariat of Public Education (SEP) program PROMEP.

ECUM provides online access to data for 2007 and 2008 through ExECUM. Institutional data can be visualized through three options:


 * A selection of the most prominent 58 universities (43 publics and 13 privates). This selection accounts for more than 60 percent of undergraduate and graduate enrollments. It includes public federal universities (UNAM, Instituto Politécnico Nacional, Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, Universidad Pedagógica Nacional, Universidad del Ejército y la Fuerza Aérea, Colegio de México, Universidad Autónoma de Chapingo, Universidad Autónoma Agraria Antonio Narro); 35 public state universities (UPES), and a group of private institutions that feature within ECUM's selected classification data.
 * Result tables for the top 20 institutions in each of the data labels in this study. These include some of the selected universities in addition to the rest of Mexico's higher education institutions, as well as institutes, centers and other research producing organizations.
 * A personalized selection from more than 600 institutions. These are classified by institutional type, institutional gatherings, by activity sector alphabetically.

ExECUM allows users to establish comparison types and levels which they consider relevant. Data is presented in raw form with virtually no derived indicators. Users can relate variables and build indicators according to their own analytical perspectives.

Based on this comparative study project, ECUM's creator, the Dirección General de Evaluación Institucional, published reports providing an analysis of the data for 2007 and 2008.

Australia
The Good Universities Guide and Excellence in Research for Australia annually rank domestic universities.

Argentina
In Argentina the National Commission for University Evaluation and Accreditation ranks higher education programs by evaluation and accreditation.

Brazil
The latest ranking, the Ranking Universitário Folha (RUF) website (in Portuguese), was created by the newspaper Folha de S.Paulo. This ranking is based on the combination of four indicators: education quality, research quality, market assessment and an innovation indicator.

Chile
In Chile the "Comisión Nacional de Acreditación" (National Commission of Accreditation of the Universities) manages evaluation and accreditation. It also ranks universities according to accreditation levels. Other commercial rankings are made by research magazines, including Qué Pasa and América Economía. Qué Pasa's ranking evaluates perception and quality following surveys of approximately 1,000 employers across the country. América Economía ranking considers quality of students, quality of teachers, rating of professors by student, research productivity, internationalization, integration with the community, student life quality and inclusion of students from lower social strata.