Accountability

University and College Rankings Resources

Since U.S. News & World Report introduced rankings in 1983, publishers, professional associations, and governments in other countries followed with their own measures, lists, and so-called “league tables.” Rankings vary extensively by criteria, coverage, and methodology. Some rankings rely heavily on peer and recruiter review scores. Others are based on bibliographic elements or Web performance. Some rankings provide a single score based on sets of weighted indicators (unified rankings), while others are criterion specific (or provide different ranks for different criteria). Rankings also vary by geographic coverage (best in the world, North America, U.S., or Midwest) and objects of ranking (institution or a program). By selecting an indicator (a set of indicators), object and methodology rankings provide their own definition of quality of institutions and programs and, therefore, raise a criticism. Given rising concerns along with a decline in participation among institutions being asked to rate similar institutions, information gleaned from rankings should be considered with caution.

This following information explains rankings and Indiana University’s position within these rankings. Rankings are presented by geographic coverage (national and international) and by the object (overall or discipline specific).

National Rankings

Well-known U.S. rankings include:

  • U.S. News & World Report provides both overall and discipline specific ranks for an institution. Criteria include: peer and recruiter assessment, placement success (or employment after graduation), faculty resources (student to faculty ratio, expenditures per student), and student selectivity.
  • National Research Council provides discipline specific information based on the number of Ph.D.’s produced per program and the number of Ph.D. programs within a particular field.
  • Faculty Scholarly Productivity provides both overall and discipline specific ranks based on faculty publications, citations, research grants, and awards.
  • Top American Research Universities provides different rankings for different criteria: research, federal research, endowment, annual giving, National Academy members, faculty awards, doctorates granted, postdoctoral appointees, and SAT scores.
  • Washington Monthly is a unified overall ranking based on the difference between predicted and actual graduation rates, research spending, number of Ph.D.s awarded, and indicators of community service.

Other U.S. rankings include:

International Rankings

Increasing international character of higher education has prompted the development of international university rankings. Some international rankings rely solely on bibliographic elements such as number of publications and citations to those publications:

Some international rankings are based solely on Web performance, such as number of pages recovered from search engines (size); number of external links received (inlinks) by a site; number of files in certain file formats; number of papers and citations for each academic domain based on Google Scholar; and so on:

The most popular international rankings incorporate different criteria:

  • Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU), published by Jiao Tong University in Shanghai, provides both overall and discipline specific ranks. ARWU criteria include: the number of the alumni of an institution winning Nobel Prizes and Field Medals, Nobel Laureates and Fields Medal winners among faculty, highly cited researchers in 21 broad subject categories, articles published in Nature and Science, articles indexed in Science Citation Index, and academic performance within a size of an institution.
  • The Times Higher Education Supplement and QS unified rank is based on research quality (peer review and citations per faculty), graduate employability (recruiter review), international outlook (percent of international faculty and international students), and teaching quality (student to faculty ratio).
  • Top 100 Global Universities by Newsweek ranks universities based on measures used in ARWU (the number of highly-cited researchers in various academic fields, the number of articles published in Nature and Science, and the number of articles listed in the ISI Social Sciences and Arts and Humanities), the Times of London Higher Education Survey (the percentage of international faculty, the percentage of international students, citations per faculty member (using ISI data), and the ratio of faculty to students), and on library holdings (number of volumes).

A number of international rankings concentrate on either MBA or Law programs:

Program Rankings

Program (or discipline specific) rankings include:

  • Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU), published by Jiao Tong University in Shanghai, provides rankings for the five broad subject fields: Natural Sciences and Mathematics, Engineering/Technology and Computer Sciences, Life and Agriculture Sciences, Clinical Medicine and Pharmacy, and Social Sciences. Ranking indicators include alumni and staff winning Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals, Highly Cited Researchers, articles indexed in Science Citation Index-Expanded and Social Science Citation Index, percent of articles published in the top 20 percent journals of each field, and the engineering research expenditure.
  • National Research Council (NRC) ranks graduate programs in 41 fields based on the number of Ph.D.’s produced, the number of programs training Ph.D.’s within a particular field, and the average number of Ph.D.’s produced per program. The NRC broad subject fields include: Arts and Humanities, Biological Sciences, Engineering, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, and Social and Behavioral Sciences.
  • Faculty Scholarly Productivity provides both overall and discipline specific rankings based on faculty publications, citations, research grants and awards. FSP Broad Areas include: Agricultural Sciences, Biological and Biomedical Sciences, Business, Education, Engineering, Health Profession Sciences, Humanities, Natural Resources and Conservation, Physical and Mathematical Sciences, Public Administration and Social Service Professions, Social and Behavioral Sciences.
  • International Champions League of Research Institutions impact (a relative citation index), activity (relative publication index), and size (number of publications) scores by seven research areas: Engineering, Computing and Technology; Physical, Chemical and Earth Sciences; Agriculture, Biology and Environmental Sciences; Life Sciences; Clinical Medicine, Social and Behavioral Sciences, and Arts and Humanities.
  • U.S. News & World Report rankings of graduate programs are sometimes based solely on the results of a peer assessment survey (e.g., Public Affairs, Fine Arts, Health). Other programs are based on several indicators (peer/employer assessments and other indicators, such as placement success, faculty resources, and student selectivity). U.S. News & World Report broad areas include business, law, medicine, engineering, education, the sciences, library and information studies, social sciences and humanities, health, public affairs, and fine arts.

Some rankings concentrate on a single area:

Consumer Comparison Sites

Consumer Comparison Sites allow searching and ranking programs based on user-defined priorities. The well-known consumer comparison site is PhDs.org.

IU Ranking Reports

Please note: The following reports are in PDF format.

National

International