Over the past nearly twenty years, university rankings have become a popular form of communication in higher education institutional performance worldwide, constantly focusing on the dialogue on higher education. The webinar series, which was organized by the Eötvös Loránd University PPK Social Communication Research Group in early February, would also like to contribute to this.
What’s behind the rankings? was asked at the professional webinar, which was the first time in a series on university rankings. The aim of the series is to review the international and domestic rankings, as well as to further develop the Hungarian UnivPress Ranking.
The online webinar, held on 3 February, was attended by nearly 50 people representing a wide range of higher education. Following the introduction of Fruzsina Szabó (HVG / Eduline), three short lectures were given in connection with the UnivPress Ranking and the international higher education rankings.
Dora Czirfusz: How do rankings measure? – Changes in indicators, their effects on rankings
Four indicators are used in UnivPress Ranking to measure lecturer excellence, each of the indicators has a weight of 25%:
- proportion of academically qualified lecturers
- proportion of lecturers with MTA titles (MTA=Hungarian Academy of Sciences)
- total number of qualified lecturers
- number of students per academically qualified lecturers.
For the indicator “number of students per academically qualified lecturers” the weighting has changed since 2018 – the weight of 50 percent, dropped to 25 percent, balancing the importance of the four indicators.
The example of some faculties showed that there are institutions that have maintained their position stable over the last six years despite the change in weighting, while other institutions have shown significant fluctuations over the years that are not clearly related to methodological changes, but rather can be traced back to changes in the underlying data. Analysing the relationship between the basic data and the ranking, it was found that the number of qualified lecturers can advance the ranking position the most, according to the current methodology.
György Fábri: University performance in light of rankings
The presentation began with an analysis of the interpretive constraints of higher education ranking indicators. In his view, rankings cannot capture several aspects of higher education, such as certain elements of professional quality or student socialization, or differences coming from scientific diversity. The presentation also raised the question of how to expand the focus through which rankings interpret higher education. For example, labour market feedback, prestige, and student satisfaction often appear as potential new interpretations in this area – but their application can be seriously methodologically hampered. The second half of the presentation analysed the changes taking place in the higher education environment and at system level (eg. changes in the lecturers and students) and their impact on rankings. Among the changes and challenges facing higher education in Hungary, the presentation mentioned, for example, the model change, the resulting narrowing competitive situation, the remaining centrality of Budapest, and the growing need for international visibility – these changes also call for a rethinking of rankings.
Sándor Soós: Trends in university performance evaluation
His presentation was based on the premise that scientific performance appears to a lesser extent in national rankings than in international rankings. The presentation considers four issues important in measuring scientific performance: indicators, comparability, data sources (eg. WOS, Scopus, MTMT (Hungarian)) and the validity of indicators. There were also various aspects of measuring publication performance (such as productivity, impact, quality, achievement) and the limitations of comparability, which stem primarily from the different characteristics of institutions. It was argued that comparability can be improved by choosing indicators that address interdisciplinary differences, as well as by comparisons at the discipline level and by comparing them in groups based on institutional profiles. In connection with the data sources, there were differences in the publication databases, and their information contents, which may result in different answers to the same question. Regarding the validity of the indicators, it was stated that although there is no significant difference in the actual publication effect between the individual institutions, small differences will be magnified as a result of the ranking. He concluded his presentation with the idea that even with careful choice of indicators, the interpretation of rankings should be treated with caution.
Invited commenters from higher education institutes also shared their thoughts, stressing that higher education rankings should be seen primarily as a marketing tool in the development of institutional strategy and not as an indicator. At the same time, the comments also shew the differences in how and according to which aspects each institution interprets the rankings, and to what extent they consider appearing in international and domestic rankings to be a strategic issue.
The next webinar, February 25, 2021, deals with the topic The Real Competition Area: Hungarian Universities in the International Ranking Field.
Dr. habil György Fábri (1964) is an habilitated associate professor (Institute of research on Adult Education and Knowledge Management, Faculty of Education and Psychology of Eötvös Loránd University), head of the Social Communication Research Group. Areas of research: university philosophy, sociology of higher education and science, science communication, social communication, church sociology. His monograph was published on the transformation of Hungarian higher education during the change of regime (1992 Wien) and on university rankings (2017 Budapest). He has edited several scientific journals, and his university courses and publications cover communication theory, university philosophy, science communication, social representation, media and social philosophy, ethics, and church sociology.
Dr. Mircea Dumitru is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Bucharest (since 2004). Rector of the University of Bucharest (since 2011). President of the European Society of Analytic Philosophy (2011 – 2014). Corresponding Fellow of the Romanian Academy (since 2014). Minister of Education and Scientific Research (July 2016 – January 2017). Visiting Professor at Beijing Normal University (2017 – 2022). President of the International Institute of Philosophy (2017 – 2020). President of Balkan Universities Association (2019 – 2020). He holds a PhD in Philosophy at Tulane University, New Orleans, USA (1998) with a topic in modal logic and philosophy of mathematics, and another PhD in Philosophy at the University of Bucharest (1998) with a topic in philosophy of language. Invited Professor at Tulsa University (USA), CUNY (USA), NYU (USA), Lyon 3, ENS Lyon, University of Helsinki, CUPL (Beijing, China), Pekin University (Beijing, China). Main area of research: philosophical logic, metaphysics, and philosophy of language. Main publications: Modality and Incompleteness (UMI, Ann Arbor, 1998); Modalitate si incompletitudine, (Paideia Publishing House, 2001, in Romanian; the book received the Mircea Florian Prize of the Romanian Academy); Logic and Philosophical Explorations (Humanitas, Bucharest, 2004, in Romanian); Words, Theories, and Things. Quine in Focus (ed.) (Pelican, 2009); Truth (ed.) (Bucharest University Publishing House, 2013); article on the Philosophy of Kit Fine, in The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, the Third Edition, Robert Audi (ed.) (Cambridge University Press, 2015), Metaphysics, Meaning, and Modality. Themes from Kit Fine (ed.) (Oxford University Press, forthcoming).
Mr. Degli Esposti is Full Professor at the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Deputy Rector Alma Mater Studiorum Università di Bologna, Dean of Biblioteca Universitaria di Bologna, Head of Service for the health and safety of people in the workplace, President of the Alma Mater Foundation and Delegate for Rankings.
Ben joined QS in 2002 and has led institutional performance insights function of QS since its emergence following the early success of the QS World University Rankings®. His team is, today, responsible for the operational management of all major QS research projects including the QS World University Rankings® and variants by region and subject. Comprising over 60 people in five international locations, the team also operate a widely adopted university rating system – QS Stars – and a range of commissioned business intelligence and strategic advisory services.Ben has travelled to over 50 countries and spoken on his research in almost 40. He has personally visited over 50 of the world’s top 100 universities amongst countless others and is a regular and sought after speaker on the conference circuit.Ben is married and has two sons; if he had any free time it would be spent reading, watching movies and skiing.
Anna Urbanovics is a PhD student at Doctoral School of Public Administration Sciences of the University of Public Service, and studies Sociology Master of Arts at the Corvinus University of Budapest. She is graduated in International Security Studies Master of Arts at the University of Public Service. She does research in Scientometrics and International Relations.
Since 1 February 2019 Minister Palkovics as Government Commissioner has been responsible for the coordination of the tasks prescribed in Act XXIV of 2016 on the promulgation of the Agreement between the Government of Hungary and the Government of the People’s Republic of China on the development, implementation and financing of the Hungarian section of the Budapest-Belgrade Railway Reconstruction Project.
He is the past President of the Health and Health Care Economics Section of the Hungarian Economics Association.
Based in Berlin, Zuzanna Gorenstein is Head of Project of the German Rectors’ Conference (HRK) service project “International University Rankings” since 2019. Her work at HRK encompasses the conceptual development and implementation of targeted advisory, networking, and communication measures for German universities’ ranking officers. Before joining the HRK, Zuzanna Gorenstein herself served as ranking officer of Freie Universität Berlin.
His books on mathematical modeling of chemical, biological, and other complex systems have been published by Princeton University Press, MIT Press, Springer Publishing house. His new book RANKING: The Unwritten Rules of the Social Game We All Play was published recently by the Oxford University Press, and is already under translation for several languages.
