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Contribution to Book
The impact of scale and scope on global university rankings: What we know and what we need to learn
World university rankings and the future of higher education (2017)
  • Liang-Cheng Zhang
  • Andrew C Worthington
Abstract
Economies of scale and scope are increasingly critical for universities operating in globally competitive higher education teaching, research and training markets. This is because the associated cost advantages could enable some institutions to increase their university rankings relatively easier. This chapter investigates the relationships between economies of scale (measured by the number of enrollments) and scope (measured by the number of teaching programs), research performance, and institutional reputation (measured by the ARWU and QS ranking scores). The results show that larger and more diverse institutions tend to have higher scores. However, when separated into public and private universities, the scale and scope effects are not so obvious between private universities and the ARWU ranking scores. Nevertheless, the chapter does identify a significant scope effect in the QS rankings for private institutions, implying that expanding research, teaching, and training programs may benefit these scores.
Keywords
  • Higher education,
  • University rankings,
  • Teaching,
  • Research,
  • Training
Publication Date
2017
Editor
K. Downing & F. A. Ganotice
Publisher
IGI Global
ISBN
9781522508199
DOI
http://dx.doi.org/ 10.4018/978-1-5225-0819-9.ch008
Citation Information
Liang-Cheng Zhang and Andrew C Worthington. "The impact of scale and scope on global university rankings: What we know and what we need to learn" Hershey, PA.World university rankings and the future of higher education (2017) p. 140 - 160
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/liang-cheng-zhang/10/