20 February 2015 | Report

EUA members’ participation in U-Multirank: Experiences from the first round

Tia Loukkola and Rita Morais

The first results of U-Multirank (UMR), a multi-dimensional ranking of higher education institutions produced with seed funding from the European Commission, were unveiled on 13 May 2014. UMR has also been discussed by EUA’s governing bodies on a number of occasions and these discussions have demonstrated that a great variety of views on UMR exist among universities and their representatives: while some have great expectations of UMR and believe in its values, others have expressed major concerns about the initiative. Therefore, the EUA Board found that a short membership consultation would be useful.


 The survey results confirm that opinions regarding UMR remain divided among EUA members.  Furthermore, the survey showed that UMR is still struggling with many of the same challenges as other rankings with regards to the comparability and reliability of data. Also, many of its indicators, in particular those related to teaching and learning are rather remote proxies to quality or performance. It will be interesting to see how UMR will attempt to address and overcome these challenges in the future.

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