Evaluation of Asian University Rankings: Position and Perspective of Leading Indian Higher Education Institutions

Although the subject of ranking higher education institutions is frequently elaborated in many research papers, consensus about a leading ranking methodology has not been reached yet. Consequently, different methodologies are based on rather conflicting indicators and therefore often provide highly diverse rankings of the world's best universities. For instance, SCImago Institutions Rankings (SIR) methodology is exclusively based on indicators of scientific output, while Times Higher Education World University Rankings (THE) and Quacquarelli Symonds World University Rankings (QS) take into account the teaching dimension of the university performance to a large degree. To explore the impact of different methodologies further, we first obtained data on Asian best-ranked universities according to SIR, THE and QS methodologies. The aim of this article is to explore possibilities to enhance ranking methodologies using I-distance method. The result was manifold: first, by employing our I-distance approach we were able to point out potential weaknesses of subjectively chosen weighting factors of THE and QS ranking methodologies. Secondly, we were able to provide detailed information on how each QS and THE indicator contributes to the final rank and emphasize the crucial indicators in the process of ranking. Thirdly, SIR does not provide the total score and its appropriate rank; and using our approach not only did we provide the total score but also determined the relative significance of each compounding SIR indicator. One of the contributions lies in the use of the I-distance method, which can easily integrate variables with different measurement units into one composite indicator. Moreover, our approach could be a foundation for impartial framework of universities' assessment, independent of subjectively formed weighting factors. Finally, a special overview of university performances of leading Indian universities is provided.