The European Commission will continue to support U-Multirank with partial funding through its Erasmus+ Programme. Joining the new structure are the Bertelsmann Foundation in Germany and Santander Group in Spain. The new partners will contribute not only to the funding of U-Multirank, but also to its governance with both partners sitting on the board. This new model is in line with the consortium’s goal of an independent non-profit organisation managing the ranking as an open source for international comparisons.
‘We are very excited to join the U-Multirank board, and contribute to the continuation of such a fantastic web tool that serves students and the diverse higher education community. Ensuring that U-Multirank remains an accessible open source platform for everyone is important to us. We are committed to its success and contribution to broadening transparency and measuring the performance of universities and colleges around the globe,’ said Mr. Javier Rogla, Senior Vice President and Global Head of Santander Universities and Universia in Santander Group.
Putting U-Multirank’s funding on a broad footing will enable students, universities, businesses, policy-makers and governments to continue making better informed comparisons of how universities worldwide perform.
U-Multirank - now in its fourth year - includes more universities than ever before. Professor Dr. Frank Ziegele of the Centre for Higher Education in Germany, one of the consortium leaders, expressed his enthusiasm in joining forces with globally known education supporters, the Bertelsmann Foundation and Santander Group. The new partnership will allow U-Multirank to reach a new level of impact in the world of higher education.
U-Multirank was initially supported with seed funding from the European Union’s Erasmus+ Programme and its predecessor for the years 2013 through 2017.
European Commissioner for Education, Culture, Youth and Sport, Tibor Navracsics, said: ‘I am pleased that with funding from the Erasmus+ Programme, U-Multirank has been able to make a positive impact on the world of higher education, and that the Bertelsmann Foundation and Santander Group will now join this initiative. The European Commission remains committed to the success of U-Multirank and its continued independence as a transparency tool which helps prospective students make informed study choices.’
U-Multirank is developed and implemented by an independent consortium led by the Centre for Higher Education (CHE) in Germany, the Center for Higher Education Policy Studies (CHEPS) at the University of Twente and the Centre for Science and Technology Studies (CWTS) from Leiden University, both in the Netherlands, as well as Fundación Conocimiento y Desarrollo (FCYD) in Spain. U-Multirank is an alternative approach to comparing university performance, and offers a solution to the dangers of traditional league tables. Its multi-dimensional approach compares the performance of some 1,500 universities across a range of different activities grading each of them from ‘A’ (very good) to ‘E’ (weak). It allows users to identify a university’s strengths and weaknesses, or the aspects that most interest them. The data included in U-Multirank are drawn from a number of sources, providing users with a comprehensive set of information: data supplied by institutions; from international bibliometric and patent databases; national databases; and surveys of more than 100,000 students at participating universities.
For more information
Website: www.umultirank.org
Twitter: @UMultirank
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