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Why does the US dominate university league tables?

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Abstract

According to Academic Ranking of World Universities, the world�s top 500 universities are owned by only 38 countries, with the US alone having 157 of them. This paper investigates the socioeconomic determinants of the wide performance gap between countries and whether the US�s dominance in the league table is largely due to its economic power or something else. It is found that a large amount of cross country variation in university performance can be explained by just four socioeconomic factors: income, population size, R&D spending, and the national language. It is also found that conditional on the resources that it has, the US is actually underperforming by about 4 to 10 percent.

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  • Mei Li & Sriram Shankar & Kam Ki Tang, 2009. "Why does the US dominate university league tables?," Discussion Papers Series 391, School of Economics, University of Queensland, Australia.
    • Handle: RePEc:qld:uq2004:391
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    File URL: https://economics.uq.edu.au/files/44602/391.pdf
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    Cited by:

    1. Tan Kuan Lu, Clifford, 2014. "University Rankings Game and its relation to GDP per capita and GDP growth," MPRA Paper 53933, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Hălăngescu, Constantin I., 2012. "Mundus academicus: arhitectura și adaptarea la fluxurile globalizării (I) [Mundus academicus: architecture and adaptation to globalization flows (I)]," MPRA Paper 36839, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. Frenken, Koen & Heimeriks, Gaston J. & Hoekman, Jarno, 2017. "What drives university research performance? An analysis using the CWTS Leiden Ranking data," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 11(3), pages 859-872.
    4. Zhimin Liu & Goodluck Jacob Moshi & Cynthia Mwonya Awuor, 2019. "Sustainability and Indicators of Newly Formed World-Class Universities (NFWCUs) between 2010 and 2018: Empirical Analysis from the Rankings of ARWU, QSWUR and THEWUR," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(10), pages 1-29, May.
    5. Vicente Safón & Domingo Docampo, 2020. "Analyzing the impact of reputational bias on global university rankings based on objective research performance data: the case of the Shanghai Ranking (ARWU)," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 125(3), pages 2199-2227, December.
    6. Olcay, Gokcen Arkali & Bulu, Melih, 2017. "Is measuring the knowledge creation of universities possible?: A review of university rankings," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 123(C), pages 153-160.
    7. Vicente Safón, 2013. "What do global university rankings really measure? The search for the X factor and the X entity," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 97(2), pages 223-244, November.

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