Library Intelligencer

The Australian
THE European Union has decided to enter the university ranking game with a serious rival to the Shanghai Jiao Tong and Times surveys, and is expected next week to announce a consortium to undertake a “multi-dimensional” world ranking.

Odile Quintin, the European Commission’s director-general for education, told the HES that the Shanghai Jiao Tong was “firmly concentrated on research”, anchored to the production of Nobel laureates, and narrow in scope.

“We think that universities have a strong role in research but also in teaching and employability so we are promoting an alternative ranking to measure all these dimensions,” she said.

The ranking would be handled by a consortium working independently of the EC, and work would begin after the results of a tendering process were revealed next week.

The plan is to develop the ranking throughout 2009 and 2010, for implementation a year later. The project will have a budget of E1.1 million ($1.9m).

Ms Quintin said the new ranking, while based in Europe, would have a global reach. She added that the new European survey would be focused much more on disciplinary strength, “because you can be the best university in nanotechnology but not in psychology”.

from the Australian Higher ed