As an increasing number of students plan to enroll in universities outside of their own country, accurate evaluative information is needed to guide such decisions. With those students in mind, U.S. News plans to release the inaugural Best Global Universities rankings on usnews.com on Tuesday, Oct. 28.
The 2015 Best Global Universities rankings will show which universities are the best globally, as well as those that are highly ranked in certain countries and regions and are leaders in key academic subject areas. These new rankings — which focus specifically on schools’ academic research and reputation overall and not their separate undergraduate or graduate programs — will allow prospective students to accurately compare institutions around the world.
The Best Global Universities rankings will also provide insight into how U.S. universities — which we have been ranking separately for the last 30 years — stand globally. All universities will be able to benchmark themselves against schools in their own country and region, become more visible on the world stage and find top schools in other countries to consider collaborating with.
To produce the rankings, which are powered by Thomson Reuters InCities TM research analytics solutions, U.S. News will use a methodology that focuses on factors that measure research performance. Specifically, the ranking indicators will include those that measure a university’s global and regional reputation; academic research performance using bibliometric indicators such as citations and publications; and school-level data on faculty and Ph.D. graduates.
The overall Best Global Universities rankings will encompass the top 500 universities spread out across 49 countries. In addition, U.S. News will publish four regional rankings that will show the top universities in Europe, Asia, Australia/New Zealand and Latin America. There will also be country-specific rankings highlighting the top schools in 11 countries with a large number of ranked schools: Canada, China, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, South Korea, Spain, Sweden and United Kingdom.
Using a separate methodology, U.S. News will publish the top 100 global universities in 21 subject areas, including key fields such as chemistry, clinical medicine, computer science, economics and business, engineering, environment/ecology, mathematics and physics. These subject-specific rankings — which are not of academic majors, departments or a specific school at a university like a business school or medical school — will be based on academic research performance in those subjects. We will use various bibliometric measures, including publications and citations, as well as indicators for global and regional reputation in that specific subject.
Each ranked university, whether in the global, regional, country or subject rankings, will have a profile page that displays contact information and detailed ranking indicators. Users of the Best Global Universities site will also be able to easily search for institutions of interest.
Along with all of the new rankings and data, U.S. News will publish comprehensive methodologies and FAQs that will explain the data, ranking factors, weights and calculations.
More from U.S. News
U.S. News Talks Arab Region University Rankings in Middle East
Princeton, Williams Take Top Spots in U.S. News Best Colleges Rankings
How to Use the Best Colleges Rankings Wisely
2015 Best Global Universities Rankings Coming Soon originally appeared on usnews.com
