Making the grade
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In today's globalised world, students often turn to international university rankings when picking a place to study. But do the current systems, dominated by US universities, do the job? Not according to the EU, which is currently working on an alternative.
Although there are a lot of different league tables out there, the two leaders of the pack are the Times Higher Education Supplement World University Rankings from the UK and the Shanghai Jiao Tong University Academic Ranking of World Universities from China. The upper echelons of both these tables are dominated by American universities, although the UK's Oxford and Cambridge also get a look in.
As more and more of the world's brightest students turn to such ranking systems for guidance, the EU is worried that European universities are not getting the ratings they deserve. It claims that the league tables focus too much on a few limited criteria and failing to paint a full picture of institutions' strengths and weaknesses.
France, in particular, claims the dominance of English-speaking countries in the current ranking systems is evidence of a bias towards Anglo-Saxon cultural values. During its EU presidency last year it pushed through plans for a new system.
As a result in the second half of 2009 the European Commission funded a consortium of experts (CHERPA) to come up with a new way of assessing universities. This system is now being rolled out in a test phase to 150 higher education institutions.
EU Commission spokesman John McDonald explains that the plan is to "create a new multi-dimensional ranking of universities around the world that will give people more information." The new system measures five different criteria and will eventually be able to give users a personalised ranking of universities based on the qualities they say they are looking for.
But critics have accused the EU of simply looking for a quick-fix when it comes to boosting the international standing of Europe's universities. They object to the rating project, claiming that the EU should instead be focusing much more on funding and supporting academic research across the continent.
