Global University Web Rankings, Directory and Search Engine at 4ICU.ORG

While a university's 'webometric' type ranking might not mean much of anything in terms of the institution's overall quality, the 4ICU site is a very useful directory and search engine of universities and colleges worldwide. And a webometric ranking makes some sense in terms of a given institutions 'web impact', especially since prospective students rely on websites to find insitutions and programs.

Here is a sample of what you find at the 4ICU site:

2010 World University Rankings

• TOP 200 UNIVERSITIES IN THE WORLD
  • Top 100 Universities in North America
  • Top 100 Universities in Latin America
  • Top 100 Universities in Europe
  • Top 50 Universities in Oceania
  • Top 100 Universities in Africa
  • Top 100 Universities in Asia

Japan gets 10 institutions in the QS World University Rankings Results for 2010

Japan gets 10 institutions in the QS World University Rankings Results for 2010

This year it is the 'THES-less' QS rankings. THES is pursuing a different methdology with a different partner.

The results for Japan are about the same as last year with a bit of 'slippage' down in the rankings for most all the institutions. Japan does not rate any in the top ten or top twenty. Todai and Kyodai are neck-and-neck in the top 30 now. Waseda is the only private university to make the top 200.

While we can not say conclusively that Japan's university reforms of the last two decades CAUSED the deterioration of its institutions' rankings, we can say they obviously didn't help (unless someone wants to make the forlorn argument that the reforms ameliorated the deterioration somewhat).  


See link below for the full list of 200 at the QS website.

http://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/world-university-rankings/2010/results

Top 30, which includes TWO universities from Japan (Toudai and Kyoudai):

1    University of Cambridge    United Kingdom   
2    Harvard University    United States   
3    Yale University    United States   
4    UCL (University College London)    United Kingdom  
5    Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)    United States       
6    University of Oxford    United Kingdom   
7    Imperial College London    United Kingdom   
8    University of Chicago    United States   
9    California Institute of Technology (Caltech)    United States  
10    Princeton University    United States 
11    Columbia University    United States  
12    University of Pennsylvania (UPenn)    United States   
13    Stanford University    United States   
14    Duke University    United States   
15    University of Michigan    United States   
16    Cornell University    United States   
17    Johns Hopkins University    United States   
18    ETH Zurich (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology)  A*    Switzerland   
19    McGill University    Canada   
20    Australian National University (ANU)  A*    Australia   
21    King's College London (KCL)    United Kingdom 
22    University of Edinburgh    United Kingdom  
23    University of Hong Kong (HKU)    Hong Kong   
24    University of Tokyo, The    Japan   
25    Kyoto University    Japan   
26    Northwestern University    United States   
27    University of Bristol    United Kingdom   
28    University of California, Berkeley (UCB)    United States   
29    University of Toronto    Canada   
30    University of Manchester    United Kingdom   

---------------------

THREE more Japanese universities making the top 100:

49    Osaka University    Japan  
60    Tokyo Institute of Technology    Japan   
91    Nagoya University    Japan  

---------------------

FIVE more making the top 200:

102    Tohoku University    Japan   
153    Kyushu University    Japan   
172    University of Tsukuba    Japan  
175    Hokkaido University    Japan 
182    Waseda University    Japan 

Who evaluates the evaluators? University rankings face shake up and more competition

Nature reports that university rankings are set to change for the better, with more sophisticated tools used to rank the world's HE and research institutions. As we have been following global rankings of universities and how they appear to be prejudiced against Asian institutions (except Hong Kong and Singapore), we thought we would point out this article published earlier this year.

Perhaps the biggest change is that the THES rankings will be based on data from Thomson Reuters from now on, not QS. Meanwhile, QS plans to press on and improve its own methodology. Moreover, other rankings and more nuanced and balanced methodologies are going to challenge the dominance of THES and ARWU (compiled by Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China). The former is often criticized as too unbalanced toward 'reputation' and volatile while the latter is said to emphasize scientific research results above all else. However, Japanese institutions fare about as well on both (which is, not very well) even though you might think a research bias would help them on ARWU.    

Url and excerpt follows:

http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100303/full/464016a.html

Published online 3 March 2010 | Nature  464, 16-17 (2010)

excerpt:

Several approaches to university rankings now being developed are switching the emphasis away from crude league tables and towards more nuanced assessments that could provide better guidance for policy-makers, funding bodies, researchers and students alike. They promise to rank universities on a much wider range of criteria, and assess more intangible qualities, such as educational excellence. And the THE ranking list is trying to remake itself in the face of the criticism.

end of excerpt, for entire article see link

University 'web rankings' for 2010

The question that Japan HEO asks is: What does the popularity of university websites indicate? Japanese universities are handicapped by a lack of English-language content. Even if they have extensive English-language content, search engines might not penetrate too deeply. Web surfers have to get past the layers of Japanese-language-only pages first. Another negative factor for Japanese universities sites is the fact that most Japanese access 'ez-web'/mobile web pages, and it is not clear how well the three measures (Google, Yahoo, Alexa) that 4icu uses actually quantify ez-web/mobile web traffic in Japan. At any rate, here is summary of the rankings with some stats about Japanese institutions included.   

Top 200 Colleges and Universities world-wide by web ranking.

http://www.4icu.org/top200/

The top 20 worldwide are:

1  Massachusetts Institute of Technology    
United States
   
2  Stanford University    
United States
   
3  Harvard University    
United States
   
4  Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México    
Mexico
   
5  University of California, Berkeley    
United States
   
6  Peking University    
China
   
7  University of Pennsylvania    
United States
   
8  Cornell University    
United States
   
9  Shanghai Jiao Tong University    
China
   
10  Yale University    
United States
   

11  Tsinghua University    
China
   
12  University of Cambridge    
United Kingdom
   
13  Duke University    
United States
   
14  Fudan University    
China
   
15  University of Oxford    
United Kingdom
   
16  Xi’an Jiaotong University    
China
   
17  Indiana University    
United States
   
18  Keio University    
Japan
   
19  National University of Singapore    
Singapore
   
20  Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich    
Switzerland

The top 20 of Asia are:
   
http://www.4icu.org/topAsia/

1  Peking University    
China
   
2  Shanghai Jiao Tong University    
China
   
3  Tsinghua University    
China
   
4  Fudan University    
China
   
5  Xi’an Jiaotong University    
China
   
6  Keio University    
Japan
   
7  National University of Singapore    
Singapore
   
8  Nanjing University    
China
   
9  Indian Institute of Technology Bombay    
India
   
10  Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur    
India
   
11  Institut Teknologi Bandung    
Indonesia
   
12  Zhejiang University    
China
   
13  Istanbul Teknik Üniversitesi    
Turkey
   
14  Bogaziçi Üniversitesi    
Turkey
   
15  Bilkent Üniversitesi    
Turkey
   
16  National Taiwan University    
Taiwan
   
17  The University of Hong Kong    
Hong Kong
   
18  The University of Tokyo    
Japan
   
19  Anadolu Üniversitesi    
Turkey
   
20  Chulalongkorn University    
Thailand
   
The Japanese universities making it into the top 200 of the world in 2010 are:

18  Keio University    
Japan

91  The University of Tokyo    
Japan
   

159  Waseda University    
Japan

   
The Japanese universities making it into the top 100 of Asia in 2010 are:

6  Keio University    
Japan
   
18  The University of Tokyo    
Japan

28  Waseda University    
Japan
   
38  Osaka University    
Japan
   
55  Hokkaido University    
Japan
   
62  Tokyo Institute of Technology    
Japan
   
63  Hiroshima University    
Japan
   
69  Kobe University    
Japan
   
More about 4icu.org:

http://www.4icu.org/

4 International Colleges & Universities is an international education directory selecting and reviewing worldwide accredited Colleges and Universities. 4icu.org includes 9,200 Colleges and Universities ranked by web popularity in 200 countries and is a free starting point to study abroad.

http://www.4icu.org/menu/about.htm

4 International Colleges & Universities is an international higher education search engine and directory reviewing world-wide accredited Universities and Colleges.

4icu.org includes 9,200 Colleges and Universities ranked by web popularity in 200 countries.

4icu.org is free of charge to both visitors and organisations included. No registration is required.

Organisations included
The 4icu.org directory includes worldwide higher education organisations which are officially accredited or recognised by national or regional bodies.

We currently do not include Community Colleges, Vocational Colleges or Distance Learning organisations.

To ensure the quality of the directory listing, 4icu.org does not participate in link exchanges or include affiliate resources within the directory.

All Universities and Colleges are included free of charge.

4icu.org Web Popularity Ranking methodology
Universities and Colleges are sorted by our exclusive 4icu.org Web Popularity Ranking.

The ranking is based upon an algorithm including three unbiased and independent web metrics extracted from three different search engines:

    *
      - Google Page Rank
    *
      - Yahoo Inbound Links
    *
      - Alexa Traffic Rank


The aim of this website is to provide an approximate popularity ranking of worldwide Universities and Colleges based upon the popularity of their websites. This can especially help international students to understand how popular a specific University/College is in a foreign country.

We do not - by any means - claim to rank organisations, or their programs, by the quality of education or level of services provided.

Japan does slightly better in this Webometrics rankings

sources:
http://www.webometrics.info/index.html
http://www.webometrics.info/top6000.asp


Japan places 3 universities (all former national universities) in the top 100. For a ranking of 6000 institutions worldwide and explanations, see links above.


WORLD RANK UNIVERSITY COUNTRY SIZE VISIBILITY RICH FILES SCHOLAR


24 University of Tokyo Japan 32 26 65 31

49 Kyoto University Japan 56 52 157 34

98 University of Tsukuba Japan 86 239 248 12

Japanese universities' websites fail to generate much traffic

There is only one Japanese university in the top 100 rankings for web traffic. That is Keio U., at number 13. Keio is an elite private university in Tokyo.

Todai, Japan's top university, gets into the top 200 at 109th place.

I suspect this lack of 'buzz' for Japanese universities' websites is caused by two factors. One, most of their websites are mostly in Japanese, with the few English language pages usually under the sign, "Under construction." Two, the very people who can use Japanese-language content don't surf much from computers. That is to say, the Japanese typically target specific, specially written pages (EZ Web) from their mobile phones, and that is the limit of their web surfing.



http://www.4icu.org/top200/

Excerpted here is the top 100 Universities and Colleges in the world by 4icu.org Web Popularity Ranking. To see the full 200, go to the link above.

1 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
United States

2 Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
Mexico

3 Harvard University
United States

4 University of California, Berkeley
United States

5 Cornell University
United States

6 Purdue University
United States

7 Yale University
United States

8 University of Cambridge
United Kingdom

9 Indiana University - System
United States

10 University of Oxford
United Kingdom

11 Shanghai Jiao Tong University
China

12 National University of Singapore
Singapore

13 Keio University
Japan

14 Tsinghua University
China

15 Lomonosov Moscow State University
Russia

16 Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich
Switzerland

17 The University of Melbourne
Australia

18 Cairo University
Egypt

19 Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro
Brazil

20 Peking University
China

21 Institut Teknologi Bandung
Indonesia

22 The Australian National University
Australia

23 Indian Institute of Technology Madras
India

24 Rheinisch-Westfälische Technische Hochschule Aachen
Germany

25 Indian Institute of Technology Bombay
India

26 National and Kapodistrian University of Athens
Greece

27 Orta Dogu Teknik Üniversitesi
Turkey

28 Université de Genève
Switzerland

29 Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
Switzerland

30 Fudan University
China

31 Gazi Üniversitesi
Turkey

32 Bilkent Üniversitesi
Turkey

33 Bogaziçi Üniversitesi
Turkey

34 Zhejiang University
China

35 Istanbul Teknik Üniversitesi
Turkey

36 Universität Zürich
Switzerland

37 Technische Universiteit Delft
Netherlands

38 Tampereen Teknillinen Yliopisto
Finland

39 Eötvös Loránd Tudományegyetem
Hungary

40 Xi’an Jiaotong University
China

41 Universidade de Coimbra
Portugal

42 Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur
India

43 Ankara Üniversitesi
Turkey

44 Université Catholique de Louvain
Belgium

45 Université de Lausanne
Switzerland

46 Dogu Akdeniz Üniversitesi
Cyprus

47 Ecole Normale Supérieure
France

48 Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee
India

49 University of California System
United States

50 Bahçesehir Üniversitesi
Turkey

51 Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon
France

52 Akdeniz Üniversitesi
Turkey

53 Közép-Európai Egyetem
Hungary

54 Dai hoc Quoc gia Thanh Pho Hô Chí Minh
Vietnam

55 Sveucilište u Zagrebu
Croatia

56 Stanford University
United States

57 Penn State University
United States

58 The University of Texas at Austin
United States

59 University of Michigan
United States

60 University of Washington
United States

61 University of Pennsylvania
United States

62 University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
United States

63 University of California, Los Angeles
United States

64 University of Minnesota
United States

65 University of Wisconsin-Madison
United States

66 Columbia University in the City of New York
United States

67 Universidade de São Paulo
Brazil

68 University of Virginia
United States

69 University of Florida
United States

70 New York University
United States

71 Carnegie Mellon University
United States

72 The Ohio State University
United States

73 Kungliga Tekniska högskolan
Sweden

74 University of Toronto
Canada

75 Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
United States

76 Universidade de Brasília
Brazil

77 University of Maryland
United States

78 University of Arizona
United States

79 Texas A&M University
United States

80 Universidad de La Rioja
Spain

81 Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
United States

82 Princeton University
United States

83 University of Southern California
United States

84 University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
United States

85 Michigan State University
United States

86 Duke University
United States

87 University of California, San Diego
United States

88 North Carolina State University
United States

89 University of California, Irvine
United States

90 The University of British Columbia
Canada

91 University of Chicago
United States

92 Anna University
India

93 The University of Hong Kong
Hong Kong

94 Johns Hopkins University
United States

95 National Taiwan University
Taiwan

96 University of California, Davis
United States

97 Arizona State University
United States

98 Freie Universität Berlin
Germany

99 Universidad de Sevilla
Spain

100 Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú
Peru

AFP Analysis: "Asia moves up university league table"

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hfjHdVEHOMBAY9e4I-DDKExDC59g

Asia moves up university league table

(AFP) Oct 8, 2009

LONDON

excerpts (see link above for full article):

>>US and British universities dominate the top of a league table of universities worldwide published Thursday, but Asian seats of learning are moving up the global rankings.<<

>>But Asian universities, while still struggling to break into the top 20, are moving upwards, with numbers in the top 200 growing in Japan, Hong Kong, South Korea and Malaysia.<<

QS Asian University Rankings 2009

The methodology is different from the THES/QS global rankings--such that Tokyo University is displaced from the top spot by two universities in Hong Kong. That makes it seem more than a little bit quirky.

http://www.topuniversities.com/university_rankings/asianuniversityrankings/

http://www.topuniversities.com/worlduniversityrankings/asianuniversityrankings/asian_university_rankings_top_200_universities/

http://www.topuniversities.com/worlduniversityrankings/asianuniversityrankings/indicators00/qscom_asian_university_rankings_vs_the_qs_world_university_rankings/

Excerpt of the top ten; see all 200 institutions ranked at the links above.


1 University of HONG KONG Hong Kong
2 The CHINESE University of Hong Kong Hong Kong
3 University of TOKYO Japan
4 HONG KONG University of Science and Tech... Hong Kong
5 KYOTO University Japan
6 OSAKA University Japan
7 KAIST - Korea Advanced Institute of Scie... Korea, South
8 SEOUL National University Korea, South
9 TOKYO Institute of Technology Japan
10= National University of Singapore (NUS) Singapore
10= PEKING University China

100 Free College Rankings (Traditional, Unorthodox and Just Plain Crazy)

100 Free College Rankings (Traditional, Unorthodox and Just Plain Crazy)

This blog offers an alternative and extensive look at how institutions of higher education in the US can be ranked.

Here is hoping for a global version. Imagine knowing which university worldwide has the most beautiful campus?

Excerpt below:

---

100 Free College Rankings (Traditional, Unorthodox and Just Plain Crazy)

Posted in College Lifestyle on Nov 24, 2008

By Laura Milligan

When you’re researching colleges, online schools and graduate universities, you’ve got a lot of choices to make. From academics to student-faculty ratios to the most diverse and even most attractive student bodies, which aspect of campus life is most important to you? Before you get too overwhelmed, take a look at our list of 100 different kinds of college rankings, from the traditional to rankings that measure demographics to ones that estimate your chances of striking it rich after graduation. Getting accepted is up to you.

http://www.unixl.com/blog/2008/100-free-college-rankings-traditional-unorthodox-and-just-plain-crazy/

THES - QS University Rankings for 2008

The rankings for this year have been published and the entire rankings and a lot of useful information about the institutions that made the list can easily be accessed starting at the Rankings homepage:

http://www.topuniversities.com/

Complete rankings:

http://www.topuniversities.com/worlduniversityrankings/results/2008/overall_rankings/fullrankings/

Top 100:

http://www.topuniversities.com/university_rankings/results/2008/overall_rankings/top_100_universities/

Universities in Japan that made the global top 100 rankings:

19 University of TOKYO Japan
25 KYOTO University Japan
44 OSAKA University Japan
61 TOKYO Institute of Technology Japan

Top technology institutions:

http://www.topuniversities.com/worlduniversityrankings/results/2008/subject_rankings/technology/

Technology institutions in Japan that made the global technology top 100:

9 University of TOKYO Japan 67.4
21 TOKYO Institute of Technology Japan 57.0
22 KYOTO University Japan 56.8
49 OSAKA University Japan 42.3
98 TOHOKU University Japan 32.7

Summary of the results from a Japan higher education perspective.

Todai slipped back a bit. Perhaps Kyodai's rankings are too low considering its Nobel winners this year. Tokyo Institue of Technology continues to be a fast riser.