Abstract
In the context of globalization of the educational services market, competition between universities is becoming more intense. This manifests itself, among other things, in the struggle for positions in international university rankings. Given that universities are evaluated according to many criteria in such rankings, it becomes necessary to identify the most significant factors in determining their positions.This study aims to identify the key factors determining the world’s leading universities’ leadership in international university rankings. The numerical values of the criteria for compiling the QS World University Rankings (QS) and Times Higher Education (THE) rankings were an empirical basis for the study. The analysis covered the Top 50 universities (according to the QS ranking) and was conducted based on reports for 2020 and 2021.At first, clustering was carried out (method – k-means); the data set was the combination of numerical values of QS and THE criteria (six and five criteria, respectively). The universities were divided into three clusters in 2020 (23, 19, 8 universities) and 2021 (23, 17, 10 universities). This showed the universities’ leadership relative to each other for each year.At the second stage, classification processing was performed (method – decision trees). As a result, criteria combinations that give an absolute separation of all clusters (2020 – five combinations; 2021 – eight combinations) were identified. The obtained combinations largely determine universities’ affiliation to clusters; their criteria are recognized as key factors of their leadership in the rankings. This study’s results can serve as guidelines for improving universities’ positions in the rankings.
Highlights
Global technological trends and the growing race for innovation, both between countries and between companies, are accompanied by increased demand for high-skilled professionals
Practical areas of analysis of key universi- for calculating QS and Times Higher Education (THE)) based on two data ty leadership factors based on international rank- mining tasks, namely clustering and classificaings are the study of the marketing environment tion
This study aims to highlight the key factors that pactness hypothesis concerning the task formudetermine the leadership of the world’s leading lated gives rise to working hypotheses about the universities in international university rankings, positive relationship between the criteria of interwhich allows ensuring the competitiveness in the national rankings, the productive contribution of global educational services market
Summary
Global technological trends and the growing race for innovation, both between countries and between companies, are accompanied by increased demand for high-skilled professionals. It should be borne in mind that rankings assess universities according to many criteria, and it becomes necessary to identify the most significant criteria in determining the positions of universities Such criteria can be considered key factors in university leadership, which can be identified based on the analysis of the numerical values of the criteria for calculating university rankings. This will serve as an additional argument in justifying management decisions, as a guideline for marketing and increasing universities’ competitiveness, especially strategies for improving the positions in international rankings
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