Ranking European universities based on their level of collaboration with the industry: the university-industry research connections index

Abstract

University rankings are able to captivate the attention of various stakeholders, as they provide easily understandable, comparable, and widely accessible information on the assessment of higher educational institutions. These benefits eventually led to their inclusion in decision-making processes. Therefore, after the introduction of the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) by the Shanghai Jiao Tong University in 2003, the university rankings proliferated. However, most of the currently devised rankings do not take into account the aspect of the relation between universities and the industry. Herein, we propose a new University-Industry Research Connections Index, which aims to provide new insights on this topic of high importance. The suggested approach can serve as a foundation for future research on university-industry collaboration and university rankings.