Rating Assessment of Universities

The ratings of universities, widely used in recent decades, the popularity of which picks up steam are the basis for the extensive list of debating issues some of which will be considered in the proposed scientific work. From the perspective of foreign authors, the paper proves the distribution of ratings in the sphere of education that is inseparably associated with the audit popularization and its modes intensification. The author considered the methods of gathering data on the universities, their ordering and assigning the points of three main international ratings of universities: Shanghai Ranking (Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU)), the Times Higher Education World University Rankings (THE), and the QS World University Rankings. The author estimated the positions of Russian universities in the leading rankings and considered the world university rankings with less influence and prominence: Leiden Ranking, Webometrics Ranking of World Universities, and U-Multirank. The use of various databases causes the significant differences between the places of domestic universities in the less known ratings, the positions in which were analyzed as well. The author concluded on the considerable strengthening and, according to some ratings, the improvement of positions of Russian universities. At the same time, there are many problems in assessing and measuring the indicators included in the rating compilation, having the obvious absence of more or less detailed justifications for the selection of indicators.