Abstract:

The Times Higher Education World University Rankings (THE), the QS World University Rankings (QS), and the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) are designed to be a vital resource for students to make informed comparisons of leading universities around the world. The universities are evaluated across teaching, research (THE, QS, ARWU), and international outlook (THE, QS). The academic excellence serves as a major performance area in the university ranking systems. The main objective of this work is to analyze the academic characteristics of the top universities listed in the world university rankings. This objective is achieved by understanding the significance and method of measuring the academic indicators of the world university rankings, identifying the top universities 150 based on the academic indicators using the rankings’ data in the last three years, and studying the universities’ academic characteristics. The work develops a general framework to improve league table performance of the universities for each academic indicator. The developed framework is designed to help universities to improve their positions in the table league over the years considering the best practices of the top 150 universities.

Keywords:

University rankings, academic characteristics, universities’ performance, best practices.