A new university ranking system has been created which takes into consideration 24 Wikipedia editions of various languages. Called the Wikipedia Ranking of World Universities (WRWU), the main idea behind this programme involves emphasising the cultural impact certain universities have had across these different issues. This helps eliminate any cultural bias resulting in a fairer classification of universities worldwide.
More specifically, the Google Matrix system is used to determine and recognise pathways of the influence of different universities between network nodes. These pathways are further determined through the algorithms: PageRank (recognises the influence of certain articles across different editions) and CheiRank (measures how communicative articles are). This method strengthens the repeatability of the results.
To prove this, the authors compared the results of their method to another well-established ranking system, the Shanghai Ranking method. They found an overlap of 60% of universities in ranking. Yet, it is concluded that the Wikipedia Ranking allows for a greater incorporation of the historical development of universities themselves.
At the top of the WRWU lies Harvard University. This is followed by the University of Oxford and University of Cambridge. Unfortunately, LSE is at position 31. But, at least it cracked the top 50!
