Cultural difference: Can it influence University rankings?

Abstract

The present global higher educational milieu is typified by its preoccupation with rankings. The inter-connectedness that has resulted from globalization has facilitated methodization of higher education systems the world over. However, there are some important deficiencies of university ranking indexes such as taking into account the whole university as a single unit without differentiating according to different fields of study or research, being limited to some well-known universities, and not considering institutional characteristics such as size or age. This study aims to explore the leading global university rankings to determine the differences in terms of their ranking criteria, main indicators, modeling choices, and the effects of these on the rankings. By using the general method of statistics, we try to analysis the weight difference of the main indicators of the university rankings from a cultural perspective. We considered that the cultural differences fundamentally lead to the deviation of the weight difference of the indicators; constituting the direction deviation from the method and impacting the stability of the rankings from the result.