A New Methodology to Construct a Database of World University Exams

Abstract

Since the final decades of the 20th century, university education has witnessed rapid growth. However, the quality of the education has varied a lot within the different programs around the world. How can we measure quality in university education? A number of institutions release annual global rankings of universities according to academic fields. One of the most respected lists, the Shanghai Academic Ranking of World Universities, uses a complex methodology to rank world universities, including six objective indicators, i.e. the number of alumni and staff winning Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals, the number of articles published in prestigious journals, the number of Highly Cited Researchers and the number of articles indexed in Science Citation Index - Expanded and Social Sciences Citation Index produced by Web of Science Group, and per capita performance. An overview of the annual list reveals the distance between universities, and offers a picture of global university education as a highly atomized system. How can we improve the homogenization of university education around the world? This is the central question of our research. In order to answer it, we focus on the classic tool used to evaluate students: exams. The aim of our paper is to establish a methodology with which to construct a database of world university exams by academic field. The database would be available to professors and students worldwide, and both categories could use it to contrast their level in a certain subject. In this sense, our proposal aims to achieve two objectives: 1) to maximize the effectiveness of exams as a measurement of students´ knowledge; 2) to use exams as a tool to homogenize education within universities in a certain academic field.