In my opinion advancing universities from developing countries in these rankings is possible, but the process is very slow. This fact is conditioned by many factors. One of them is the very strong position (and still growing) of universities in the top 100 or even 200. Secondly, the most important resource of any university determining its strength is students. A lot of talented students from developing countries choose top foreign universities - apart from domestic ones (the phenomenon of brain drain). This phenomenon contributes to the development of these top universities and the stagnation of universities in developing countries. These dependencies can be compared to the phenomenon of the poverty trap.

It's a really important subject open to discussion in a forum such as ResearchGate where so many universities are present. We can say that university rankings are a hot topic these days and their significance keeps growing steadily. With all their limitations rankings are an attempt to establish the relative position of universities and to offer some objective measures of their activity and achievements, although the criteria employed may be easy to criticize.

Concerning the use of rankings for universities from developing countries the benefits can still be present and some of the indicators can be particularly valuable (number of articles published in refereed journals, research activity, drop-out rate, degree of internationalization, etc.). Konrad Rojek indicated the importance of having talented students. Many of these students can't afford a top-ranking institution and have to go to their local universities. The other consideration is the university budget. With financial constraints, the scope of what universities can do is quite limited. Nevertheless, they play the most important role in the developing country, educating the future elite of the country. Rankings can help them to work on their strengths and weaknesses and to position themselves better with respect to other national or regional universities.

Thank you Sir for starting this subject.

All universities work hard to meet the ranking criteria, but many points stand against this goal, one of them, the universities have No role in determining the number of accepted students, and they should accept all students regardless their Personal variations. Some Universities obligated to accept students 2-3 times their real capacity, this affect the training and learning of students and then, this affect the Quality of the outcome.

Regards.

Dear sir

Wishes you a nice time

It is a very important and vital issue

I think the absence of real and clear long term strategies considered as an important point

Most of our universities acts by endeavors and random decisions

Best regards

I think lumping universities from both developed and developing countries into a single ranking system appears to be comparing genetically modified oranges and local oranges. They have different structures and growth path. One significant difference is that universities in developing countries are largely funded through government budgets with little or no significant interest in research, industrial collaboration and internationalisation. Their simple task is to produce as many graduates as possible. Contrastingly, in most developed countries, universities get more income based on research and industrial collaboration with little or no government influence. Interestingly research, industrial collaboration and internationalisation are key ingredients of world university rankings.

So the question is not just about whether universities in developing countries can be top-ranked universities, the question should be can the ranking organisation provide meaningful rankings reflecting on the structures of the universities in developing countries.

Many thanks for the above valuable contributions made so far. Ranking is used for different purposes e.g. attracting funds, applicants (students), needed staff ...etc. I agree with Vincent Tawiah that universities in developing countries play a completely different role in their countries and such role is not addressed in the ranking systems currently in operation. Also, universities in developing countries lack academic self-governance including budgeting, student selection, strategic planning...etc as explained by Azzawi Hadi and Abdulhadi Mohamed Jumaa. Unless such criteria used by currently operating ranking systems are changed to adopt such role, universities in developing countries have a slim chance of even being considered for such ranking. One might suggest, that current criteria act to standardize the nature of universities towards fulfilling of these “standards”; in such case, this will take very long time to achieve such fulfilment.

All university ranking systems are based on a variety of measures – for example teaching quality, research quality or the ratio of staff to students. Each measure contributes a particular percentage towards a university’s score, depending on how important it is considered to be – this is called its weighting.

The following are three rankings and criteria (among many others):

A. The Academic Ranking World Universities (ARWU- also known as the Shanghai Ranking) has following criteria:

1. Graduates (bachelor's, master's or doctoral degrees) winning Nobel Prizes and Fields Medal (10%)

2. Staff of an institution winning Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals (20%)

3. Highly cited researchers. These are individuals who are the most cited within each category of the 21 broad subject categories (20%)

4. Papers published in Nature and Science (20%)

5. Papers indexed in Science Citation Index-expanded and Social Science Citation Index (20%)

6. Per capita academic performance of an institution (10%)

B. The Times Good University Guide rankings:

1. Students’ course satisfaction – 17%. This includes ratings of teaching, assessment and feedback, and academic support (together contributing 11% of the total score), and organisation and management, learning resources, personal development and overall satisfaction (together contributing 5%).

2. Research quality – 17%

3. Entry standards – 11%

4. Staff-student ratio – 11%

5. Services and facilities spend – 11%

6. Degree completion (whether students drop out) – 11%

7. Good honours (whether students get a good grade) – 11%

8. Graduate career prospects – 11%

C. The QS World University Rankings 2016–2017

Academic reputation – 40%

Citations per faculty (how often a university’s research work is quoted) – 20%

Staff-student ratio – 20%

Employer reputation – 10%

Percentage of staff from other countries – 5%

Percentage of students from other countries – 5%

‘Employer reputation’ is measured by surveying employers worldwide as to ‘the universities they perceive to be producing the best graduates’. Extra weight is given to universities that are mentioned by employers from other countries.

For further info, see:

https://www.academia.edu/44903898/Rankings_Criteria_and_Their_Impact_on_Universities

GY Mustafa Alsheikh Thanks for the details. Very interesting requirements by different ranking bodies. However, most of these different categories are at this disadvantage of universities in developing countries.

Vincent Tawiah You are absolutely right. The role and mission of univeristy in developing countries differ from those in the developed part of the world as the needs at present tiem are much differet too. Thanks for your valuable input.

GY Mustafa Alsheikh the research budget still add limitations against the academics, they have to pay for the research and for publishing, as well they should pay for attendance of international conferences in spite of their limited resources.

Preparation for entering a good university is essential, and universities in developing countries will benefit greatly from well-educated students who will boost their performance. In this sense, it's necessary to invest in good quality secondary education. Universities with a minimal budget can't afford to use their limited resources with students who cannot do well in higher education. University rankings are not essential at this stage, and specific key performance indicators adapted to the country's conditions are required.

Carlos Rodríguez-Monroy You are absolutely right. In present time, the adopted set of accreditation standards play a pivotal role in raising the universities level of performance and outcomes in developing countries. However, the implementation of the accreditation procedures can be, in many instances, flaunt and a great piece of show biz!

Azzawi Hadi Your highlighted very important issue: funding of research. Taken into consideration the prevailing economic constrains, researchers should seek external funding from other sources. One important source is to attract a the support of a stakeholder who will make use of the results of the research. In other words, to tailor research to serve problems and provide solutions against sharing in the cost incurred by research. Unfortunately, this situation has led to the dominance of drugs companies to infilterate the research activities of medical schools in favour of the company's products. This activity is prohibited by the World Health Organization and creates a bias for prescribing practitioners. Sharing in research projects on clinical trials could be useful and harmless. In Iraq, until 2003, any university faculty member of staff will be granted financial support to deliver research in any outside conference; only acceptance letter is needed.

Thanks, Prof GY Mustafa Alsheikh for initiating such an interesting discussion.

First, I agree that there is a current aspiration for ranking. Still, I propose that if we named it as (world university ranking), so its criteria should be applicable and feasible to all, then the objective achievements of each university will be more meaningful than others. Unfortunately, this is not the case due to significant differences in institutions' resources to another, even in the same country.

As mentioned above, there are many limitations and techniques to boost the university's ranking. Some of these techniques are directly related to financial resources. It is not fair for every university to change its own agenda (perhaps more relevant to the community it serves) to comply and go higher on the scale. That is why I started to see few institutions nowadays of recognised quality in higher education opting out of the ranking game because they want to direct the fund to other more relevant channels.

One day would be better to have universal quality measures set by an independent body and be available for implementation in developed and developing countries through their higher education ministries. Such institutions' accreditation maintenance will be assessed against these universally accepted measures, with no more numbering or scales that seem to be less relevant if to be seen as a worldwide scale giving the intrinsic differences in universities agenda, roles, and resources.

Just a suggestion in a different way!

Regards,

Mohamed Hassan Elnaem Many thanks Dr Mohamed for your important insight and views. I totally agree with your input. As you clearly described, ranking in education has many side effects because it creates "competetion" which overrides the purpose of education. Education goal is to induce change of behaviour of learners aiming at serving communities needs which is even more crucial in developing countries. The process of accreditation is much more useful than ranking because it adopts a set of agreed upon standards that every university around the world (and college) work to upgrade its input, process, output and outcomes. Accreditation systems never approve nor mean to have a ranking product of any kind. Furthermore, accreditation standards do not hinder any institute to adopt standards higher than the adopted set! Warm regards.