Skyline SIR Method for University Ranking: Case Studies Based on QS, THE, and ARWU Rankings
Junyi Chai, Junjie Zhou · 2025
Annually released university rankings receive significant attention of public, medium, and stakeholders. Paradoxically, increased attention leads to more criticisms. The most commonly used ranking technique is the weighted sum method, which has notable limitations. It tends to overemphasize topperforming alternatives while neglecting the distinct qualities of universities worldwide. To address this issue, we introduce a novel multicriteria framework, what we call Skyline Superiority and Inferiority Ranking (SIR), for assessing and ranking universities. The SIR adopts a two-stage process that incorporates both relative and absolute differences in evaluation metrics. This method novelly incorporates objective values of evaluations and subjective preferences of human beings when conducting multicriteria ranking, which has revealed the unique value of often-overlooked universities universities that usually have been unfairly judged in various popular global university ranking published by influential medium. In our empirical studies, we analyze up-to-date data coming from Quacquarelli Symonds (QS), Times Higher Education (THE) University Rankings, and Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) of 2022. Our proposed approach has been verified and compared with existing methods. We discuss how to define a good university through proper settings of criteria and analyze widely-spreading problematic issues thereinto.