Past, present of guides to universities

(China Daily)
Updated: 2009-11-24 10:00

University rankings go back to the 1870s, but few people started to take notice until more than a century later.

It was not until 1983 that the first university rankings were printed in an international publication, appearing in the United States-based News and World Report. Shortly after, the Times in UK, Germany's Der Spiegel and Macleans magazine in Canada followed suit.

In China, the government called for evaluation of the country's higher education in 1985, prompting many Chinese academics to start exploring the university rankings tables.

Two years later, the Beijing-based Science and Technology Daily published China's first college rankings, which feature almost 90 universities.

With the rapid development of the country's higher education, conflicts between quality and quantity have become more intense. No one wants to go to a mediocre university, so parents and students need the guidance from rankings.

So far, there have been almost 100 college rankings tables published by 20 organizations in China.

The top four most popular in China are the Academic Ranking of World Universities, which is compiled and published by academics at Shanghai Jiao Tong University; the Evaluation Report of Postgraduates' Education in China, from Wuhan University; the China University Rankings from the Guangdong academy of management science and netbig.com, an Chinese education website.

All organizations decide their own evaluation indictors and score standards, giving overall ranks or scores in certain fields. Source: Xinmin.cn