The World University Rankings Model Validation and a Top 50 Universities Predictive Model

Data analytics has opened the possibility of exploring great amounts of information and finding patterns which helps us make predictions or give an explanation to certain behaviours and phenomena. Research analytics helps us uncover trends and relationships in different academic fields, and implement metrics that assess the quality of researchers and educational institutions. In this work we take the World University Rankings by Times Higher Education and their indicators from 2011 to 2019 to validate their evaluation model, assess the predicting potential of their rankings and uncover potential relationships between the ranking’s indicators. We found out a good prediction model and that some of the indicators carry relationships worth exploring and explaining.