A data analytics approach for university competitiveness: the QS world university rankings

Abstract

In recent years, higher education has felt pressured to prepare its graduates for the highly competitive international market due to globalization. Thus, many institutions have turned to position themselves well in university rankings as a way to attract the best academic and student talent from all over the world. Our work presents a predictive model for measuring university performance in the QS world university rankings (QS-WUR). We used a ten-year dataset to build models with statistical and machine learning algorithms contained in the library Caret of the RStudio software tool, to forecast global university position in QS-WUR. With these tools, we designed a methodology to predict the university partners' Final Scores based on their historical performance, achieving errors in the range of one or two points out of 100. The modelling may be a useful aid for university officers to develop strategies for improving institutional processes to attract the best students, faculty, and funding, enhance international collaboration and outlook, and foster international university prestige.

The infrastructural role of education in the social and investment model of economic growth: the specifics of emerging markets

“…This paper contributes to the ongoing scientific discussion on the issues of university management through the justification of the following directions of higher education's development: pupil-teacher ratio (in support of Pérez-Rodríguez et al, 2022;Valverde-Espinoza and Barja-Ore, 2022); mobility in higher education (in support of Lo et al, 2022;Cuzzocrea and Krzaklewska, 2023); QS university ranking (in support of Estrada-Real and Cantu-Ortiz, 2022;Moshtagh et al, 2023).…”

“…The following directions of higher education's development are distinguished in the existing literature: − University/industry research collaboration for the improved mastering of applied competencies by university students, increase in the competitiveness of university graduates in the labor market, improvement of their employment opportunities and career building and creation of applied technologies and accelerated commercialization of university innovations (Fernandes and O'Sullivan, 2023;Zhuang and Zhou, 2023); − Expenditure on education for the improvement of accessibility of higher education services, which, in particular, involves an increase in the scale of state order for the training of highly skilled and digital personnel by state-funded universities on budgetary places (Ali, 2022;Ojha et al, 2022); − Pupil-teacher ratio for improvement of the quality of higher education services that are provided by universities (Pérez-Rodríguez et al, 2022;Valverde-Espinoza and Barja-Ore, 2022); − Mobility in higher education for the free exchange of knowledge and technologies, international recognition of education diplomas, the attraction of foreign students and teachers, foreign internships, research by international scientific groups and strengthening of the international status of universities (Lo et al, 2022;Cuzzocrea and Krzaklewska, 2023); − Gross expenditure on R&D, the centers of which are universities, for the acceleration of innovative development of the economy (Su et al, 2022;Weiyu et al, 2022); − QS university ranking for strengthening of the global competitiveness of universities, which is demonstrated by their position in international university rankings, of which the QS ranking is one of the most respectable (Estrada-Real and Cantu-Ortiz, 2022;Moshtagh et al, 2023).…”