Shedding the Light on the Stability of University Rankings in the ICT Field

Abstract

A global trend nowadays is shifting the attention from the overall university ranking towards the ranking in a particular scientific field: "Ranking by Subject" and/or "Field Ranking". The objective of the research presented in this paper is the review of the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) aspect of the universities performance. The major concern of the study is the uncertainty and sensitivity of ICT field ranking, regarding the weighting scheme of a particular ranking methodology. The paper thus examines the ICT field-based section of the Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) and URAP rankings and gives a detailed comparison of the stability of these ranking methods. According to the results, URAP ICT ranking is shown to be more stable than QS ICT ranking, with a lower level of uncertainty and sensitivity to different model assumptions. Moreover, we gave an overview of particular standings of Indian universities in both QS and URAP ICT rankings, tackling the issue of the uncertainty and sensitivity of their positions.