Insights
Notes on rankings, data and impact
What is changing in the rankings, what the numbers do and don’t tell us, and the occasional disagreement. Most of these first appeared on LinkedIn.
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Who will pay for better higher education data?
On the tertiary education data gap, and three questions that need answering first.
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Changes in the THE World University Rankings, 2027 and 2028
A falling number of reputation votes, exact positions down to 300th, and proposed changes to the citation measures.
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The ranking with the most
More than 3,000 universities submitted data to the THE rankings this year. What does that number actually tell us?
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The Impact Ratings and progress
How can you tell a university that improved its activity from one that improved its evidence selection?
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The principles behind the Impact Ratings
Why I built the ratings around the SDGs themselves, and why evidence selection is now the crux of every submission.
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Why this statement is a bit different
I usually have a low tolerance for statements. The UN consensus statement on building sustainable futures is an exception.
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Publishing for the Sustainable Development Goals
What happens if you evaluate journals by the SDGs rather than by traditional academic subjects?
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Reputation is more than a ranking
Ranking position is a symptom of reputation management, not the whole picture.
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Is India failing the global rankings, or are the rankings failing India?
Not a story of weak universities, but of misaligned measurement.
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A welcome return to Africa
QS launch a Sub-Saharan Africa ranking, two years after THE withdrew theirs. What would make it better?
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Who will be happy with the new Time ranking?
A new entrant on well-travelled ground, and the winners and losers in its first results.
Publications
- Ross, D. (2024). University Accountability. Informe CYD 2024, monograph.
- Ross, D. (2020). University Rankings as a Tool for Social Impact. Stanford Social Innovation Review.
- Ross, D. (2017). Times Higher Education World University Rankings. In Research Analytics: Boosting University Productivity and Competitiveness through Scientometrics, pp. 137–146.
Questions about rankings or reputation?
Follow along on LinkedIn, or get in touch directly.