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EU launches new university rankings

A new university ranking system aimed to provide a more realistic and user-friendly guide to higher education institutions – and challenge the hegemony of today’s leading rankings – was launched by the European Union in Dublin last week.

Five hundred universities from across Europe and the world are expected to take part in U-Multirank

Five hundred universities from across Europe and the world are expected to take part in U-Multirank with the first results set to be published in early 2014.

“This will be a modern and sophisticated ranking, capturing the full diversity of higher education,” said Androulla Vassiliou, European Commissioner for Education, Culture, Multilingualism and Youth.

“Existing international rankings still tend to attach too much weight to research reputation”

“Existing international rankings still tend to attach too much weight to research reputation. Our multi-dimensional ranking will provide a more accurate and comparable guide to university quality.”

The “multi-dimensional” ranking will rate universities based on their reputation for research, quality of teaching and learning, international orientation, partnerships with business and start-ups, and regional engagement.

Meanwhile, a new website will allow students and institutions to create personalised rankings based on their own priorities. Students will be able to compare institutions with similar profiles or field-based rankings. Similarly, institutions will be able to compare their data to other schools’ and overall averages.

“U-Multirank will help young people make the right study choices and it will motivate institutions to improve their performance across a whole range of activities,” said Vassiliou. “It will also be a useful tool for decision-makers, enabling them to be better placed to develop effective higher education strategies for the future.”

It is hoped that the rankings will weaken the dominance of the Times Higher Education, QS and Shanghai Jiao Tong rankings, which critics say prioritise science and ignore humanities, as well as the student experience. Commenting for the European Students Union (ESU), Erik Arroy said: “Rankings will never be able to reflect the quality of, or students’ real experience of, higher education. The attempt, however, to create a multidimensional system as an alternative to today’s rankings is welcomed.”

Fernando M Galan, a member of ESU’s Executive Committee, however warned that the U-Multirank could still “commoditise” higher education as other rankings have done. “It has the potential to become either relevant for students to be able to take an informed decision by promoting the diversity of the European Higher Education Area; or to contribute to the marketization and commodification of higher education,” he said. “Our responsibility, as students, is to contribute to the first and never allow the second to happen.”

Universities have been invited to sign up for the rankings until the middle of this year, with the first rankings scheduled to appear in February 2014. More institutions will be able to sign up in later phases.

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