Nominal versus Attained Weights in Universitas 21 Ranking

Universitas 21 Ranking of National Higher Education Systems (U21 Ranking) is one of the three new ranking systems appearing in 2012. In contrast with the other systems, U21 Ranking uses countries as the unit of analysis. It has several features which lend it with greater trustworthiness, but it also shared some methodological issues with the other systems. One of these is the discrepancies between nominal and attained weights. This problem is solved by standardization of indicators scores before they are weighted and summed. Multiple regression shows that the discrepancy disappears after score transformation. Implications for future ranking of universities are briefly discussed.