Brussels, 18/12/2012 (Agence Europe) - On Monday 17 December, the European Commission launched a new international university ranking aimed at facilitating student choice, in total transparency, with regard to what universities have to offer. Around five hundred universities from across Europe and the world are expected to take part in this new international university “U-Multirank” ranking. It aims to provide a more realistic and user-friendly guide than current university guides. Androulla Vassiliou, European Commissioner for Education, Culture, Multilingualism and Youth, was extremely pleased to announce that, “This will be a modern and sophisticated ranking, capturing the full diversity of higher education. Existing international rankings still tend to attach too much weight to research reputation. Our multi-dimensional ranking will provide a more accurate and comparable guide to university quality”. U-Multirank will be formally launched at a major conference on 30-31 January in Dublin under the Irish Presidency of the European Union.
The new listing, U-Multirank, will differ from existing rankings by rating universities according to a broader range of performance factors, aimed at providing a more realistic and user-friendly guide to what they offer. The new “multi-dimensional” ranking will rate universities in five separate areas: reputation for research; quality of teaching and learning; international orientation; success in knowledge transfer (eg partnerships with business and start-ups); and regional engagement. Universities are being invited to sign up for the new ranking in the first half of 2013, and the first results are due in early 2014. The Commission emphasises that the process is expected to help participating universities to know exactly where they are located on the different levels of applicable criteria, which will help encourage them to improve their results by developing more efficient strategies. The Commission is eager for many universities to take part in this project. The project will be guided by an independent consortium consisting of the Centrum für Hochschulentwicklung (CHE) in Germany and the Center for Higher Education Policy Studies (CHEPS) in the Netherlands, in collaboration with other partners.
U-Multirank is the culmination of an initiative that originated at a conference organised under the 2008 French Presidency of the European Union, which called for a new university ranking based on a methodology reflecting a variety of dimensions of excellence in an international context. The results of a feasibility study commissioned by the European Commission were published in 2011 and confirmed that both the concept and implementation of the project were realistic and useful. U-Multirank will be developed in 2013-2014 and will receive €2 million in EU funding from the Lifelong Learning Programme, with the possibility of a further two years of seed-funding in 2015-2016. The goal is for an independent organisation to run the ranking thereafter. (IL/transl.fl)