College and university rankings

College and university rankings are rankings of institutions in higher education ordered by various combinations of various factors. Rankings have most often been conducted by magazines, newspapers, websites, governments, or academics. In addition to ranking entire institutions, organizations perform rankings of specific programs, departments, and schools. Various rankings consider combinations of measures of funding and endowment, research excellence and/or influence, specialization expertise, admissions, student options, award numbers, internationalization, graduate employment, industrial linkage, historical reputation and other criteria. Various rankings mostly evaluating on institutional output by research. Some rankings evaluate institutions within a single country, while others assess institutions worldwide. The subject has produced much debate about rankings' usefulness and accuracy. The expanding diversity in rating methodologies and accompanying criticisms of each indicate the lack of consensus in the field. The variety of academic rankings provide a comprehensive overview and insightful overlook of different academic institutions on composite capabilities in academia. Whilst United Nations advocates for the beneficial role that higher education could be the common good of social leverage and educating skills to equip everyone participated, yet college ranking is a transparent tool for a fair evaluation for the public.

For rankings of United States universities in particular, see Rankings of universities in the United States. Several organizations produce worldwide university rankings, including the following.

The Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) compiled by the Shanghai Jiao Tong University and now maintained by the ShanghaiRanking Consultancy, has provided annual global rankings of universities since 2003, making it the earliest of its kind. The ranking is funded by the Chinese government and its initial purpose was to measure the gap between Chinese and "world class" universities. In the 2015 Academic Ranking of World Universities there are no Chinese universities in the first 100 of 500 places. ARWU rankings have been cited by The Economist magazine. It has been lauded for being "consistent and transparent" based on an article. The education ministers of France, Norway and Denmark traveled to China to discuss and find ways to improve their rankings. ARWU does not rely on surveys and school submissions. Among other criteria, ARWU includes the number of articles published by Nature or Science and the number of Nobel Prize winners and Fields Medalists (mathematics). Harvard has topped the ranking for years. One of the primary criticisms of ARWU's methodology is that it is biased towards the natural sciences and English language science journals over other subjects. Moreover, the ARWU is known for "relying solely on research indicators", and "the ranking is heavily weighted toward institutions whose faculty or alumni have won Nobel Prizes": it does not measure "the quality of teaching or the quality of humanities." Along with QS World University Rankings and THE World University Rankings, the ARWU is widely recognized and cited as one of the 3 main university rankings.

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