Analyzing Universities Around the World

Objective

There are several organizations that collect ranking data of universities around the world. One of the organization is called The Times Higher Education.

“The Times Higher Education World University Ranking is widely regarded as one of the most influential and widely observed university measures. Founded in the United Kingdom in 2010, it has been criticized for its commercialization and for undermining non-English-instructing institutions.” 

There are various scores such as how international the schools are, how many students and teachers, how much the papeers from the school faculty were cited in the past, etc.

I wanted to see if there are any regional patterns interms of how the school score on these scores?

For example, is there a difference between the schools in the United States and the schools in Asia. If so, what makes the such difference?

Data

I have downloaded this data from Kaggle, which originally sourced from this organization.

The scoring data is from 2011.

Analysis

I have run PCA to visualize how the schools are scoring on those measures and to see if there are any regional patterns.

World

There are patterns in terms of how the schools score on the measures.

At high level, the schools in the United States tend to score high on Teaching, Research, and Citation. The schools in Europe tend to score high on International and Female Ratio.

And the schools in Asia tend to score high on Male Ratio.

It’s interesting to see the schools in both Europe and Asia tend to score low on Research and Teacing.

The chart below shows the difference in the pattern between the United States and Asia.

And here is one that contrasts Asia and Europe.

But, there seems to be some schools in Asia that score high on Citation, Research, Teaching and International.

Which countries are they coming from?

Asia

I have run another PCA, but this time limiting the data only to the Asian schools.

The schools in Singapore and Hong Kong tend to score high on International, Citation, and Femal Ratio. On the other hand, the schools in Japan tend to score high on Male Ratio, and when it comes to International and Citation, they score pretty low.

Conclusion

The schools in the Unites States are good at Research and Teaching. There are a few countries who are good at Research and Teaching as well, they tend to be in Singapore and Hong Kong.

On the other hand, the schools in Japan are not doing good with Research and Teaching. Also, these schools have much higher rate of male students compared to other countries and regions.