The Project

According to the Berlin Principles, rankings should

“be clear about their purpose and their target groups. Rankings have to be designed with due regard to their purpose. Indicators designed to meet a particular objective or to inform one target group may not be adequate for different purposes or target groups.” (Principle 2).

Taking this principle of good ranking practice seriously means that defined rankings should include and compare similar and comparable programmes or institutions in terms of their missions and profiles. There is no one-size-fits-all-approach for rankings. It does not make sense to compare study programmes in engineering in e.g. a small regional-oriented institution focussing on undergraduate education with an internationally-oriented research university where graduate education (Master, PhD) is a central element of the profile.

The feasibility study will included both focused institutional rankings and field-based rankings.

Focused institutional ranking

A focused institutional ranking relates to a particular dimension of the classification and allows comparisons of institutions along a single aspect of institutional activity such as education, research, internationalization, or knowledge transfer. According to the multidimensional approach a focused ranking does not collapse all dimensions into one rank, but will instead provide a fair picture of institutions (‘zooming in’) within the multi-dimensional context provided by the full set of dimensions. Thus, multiple viewpoints of a higher education institution may be presented—viewpoints that bear relevance to the various users of the classification, for instance academics, students, administrators, policy-makers on various levels, providers of funding, business leaders, researchers, or the general public. The focused institutional rankings will provide a comparison of the behaviour or performance of a set of institutions on the dimensions of the classification. The comparative analysis of a set of institutions on one singular dimension is a focused ranking of these institutions on that dimension. The implication of this approach is that institutions can be expected to have different comparative results on different dimensions and thus that a multi-dimensional institutional ranking approach implies different outcomes for different institutions on different dimensions.

Individual institutions can of course be expected to ‘score’ differently on different dimensions. The set of the ‘scores’ of an individual institution on the whole set of dimensions of the classification defines the institution’s profile.

Field based ranking

A field-based ranking is a multi-dimensional ranking of a set of study programmes in a specific field or discipline of higher education. Rankings of study programmes can only be meaningfully interpreted within the wider context provided by the multi-dimensional classification of entire institutions. Achieving field-based rankings within meaningful classifications of institutions is a major aim of the project. In order to design the field-based rankings, the methodology of CHE’s well-established university ranking and its international Excellence Ranking will be elaborated.