U-Ranking report

The U-Ranking (Synthetic Indicators of Spanish Universities) 2022 report presents the results of the eleventh edition of the project, based on the analysis of universities’ activities in teaching and research and innovation, offering a classification of the Spanish universities for each dimension and for the total of university activities.

What does this report contain?

This report describes the methodology used to construct the variables and indicators that serve as a basis for the different classifications and explores in detail the two types of rankings constructed, university performance (U-Ranking) and their volume of results (U-Ranking Volume), comparing them with each other, with the Shanghai ranking, as well as with the results from the 2022 edition of U-Ranking.

In addition, this year’s edition features a detailed analysis of the labor market insertion outcomes of university students. The analysis examines the characteristics of employment of university students in relation to other educational levels and the condition of the Spanish labor market compared to other European countries. It explores the factors that have the greatest impact on the labor market insertion of university students and identifies the careers and also the universities with the best labor market results.

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U-Ranking Analysis

The U-Ranking (Synthetic Indicators of the Spanish University System) 2023 report presents the eleventh edition of the results of the universities in their teaching and research and innovation activities. Download the complete report or a summary of the main conclusions.

The eleventh edition of U-Ranking includes 48 public and 23 private universities that have provided sufficient information of adequate quality, so that the data is homogeneous with that of public universities in order to construct synthetic indicators. Therefore, this year’s edition analyses a total of 71 universities, representing 97% of the Spanish university system in terms of undergraduate students.

The results of the U-Ranking of Spanish Universities are presented under two different approaches:

U-Ranking

Ranks the universities according to their performance, eliminating the size factor

U-Ranking Volume

Ranks the universities according to their total volume of results

The acronyms used for each university are the following:

Global rankings

U-Ranking

U-Ranking classifies Spanish universities according to their performance (in teaching and research and innovation), eliminating the size factor to compare universities.

Universities are grouped into 11 levels according to the performance index value rounded to one decimal place. Within each group with similar performance the universities are ordered according to the full index value but note that these second-order differences need not be relevant.

  • Ranking
    Index
    University
  • 1
    1.5
    Universidad Carlos III de Madrid
  • 1
    1.5
    Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya
  • 1
    1.5
    Universitat Pompeu Fabra
  • 2
    1.4
    Universitat Politècnica de València
  • 2
    1.4
    Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
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Universities without score were not analyzed due to lack of information
(*) Universities younger than 15

U-Ranking vs U-Ranking Volume

The comparison of our two main rankings once again shows a group that appears at the top of the rankings in the areas that have been examined. The shaded area of the figure contains a group of 15 universities which stand out in U-Ranking, both for their high performance and great volume of results. From this point of view, there is a group of universities that show the best practices in the university system. In turn, the universities listed in the Shanghai Ranking have been highlighted in a dark blue color. The results are very clear, almost all the universities in the shaded area which have the best results in volume and performance in U-Ranking also appear in the Shanghai Ranking.

U-Ranking Volume vs Shanghai Ranking

The figure compares the results of U-Ranking Volume with the results of Shanghai Ranking, the most cited international ranking, which is also based mainly on variables that are not corrected for size. For this analysis, we rank 40 Spanish universities listed in the top 1,000 of the 2022 Shanghai Ranking by the five standardized indicators published by ARWU, allowing for a better comparison. Although there is some discrepancy, partly because U-Ranking Volume considers the role of teaching, there is a great deal of similarities between both classifications. The universities listed in the Shanghai Ranking Top 500 are highlighted in the figure.

U-Ranking vs Shanghai Ranking

The similarities between U-Ranking and Shanghai Ranking are not as obvious as those observed with U-Ranking Volume, since the Shanghai Ranking hardly takes into account the differences in size. However, both rankings coincide in the universities which are at the top of the Spanish system and located mainly in the first tercile of both classifications.

Note: Included are the top 18 universities according to U-Ranking Volume and U-Ranking, as well as the 11 Spanish universities in the TOP 500 of the 2022 Shanghai Ranking

U-Ranking (Performance and Volume) vs Shanghai Ranking

The following figure compares the results of the first quartiles of U-Ranking, U-Ranking Volume and Shanghai Ranking. Although the intersections are many, there are some differences. The diagram identifies a group of five universities all positioned at the top of the three rankings. We can observe than from the eleven Spanish universities in the Top 500 of Shanghai Ranking, ten are in the first quantile of U-Ranking Volume and seven among the best in U-Ranking.

Teaching and Research
and Innovation rankings

U-Ranking for teaching

The following classification focuses on the performance in teaching activities of Spanish universities.

  • Ranking
    Index
    University
  • 1
    1.3
    Universitat Politècnica de València
  • 1
    1.3
    Universidad Carlos III de Madrid
  • 1
    1.3
    Universidad Europea de Madrid
  • 1
    1.3
    Universidad de Navarra
  • 1
    1.3
    Universitat Ramon Llull
  • 1
    1.3
    Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya
  • 2
    1.2
    Universidad Internacional de La Rioja (*)
  • 2
    1.2
    Universidad Pontificia Comillas
  • 2
    1.2
    Mondragon Unibertsitatea
  • 2
    1.2
    Universidad Europea de Valencia (*)
  • 2
    1.2
    Universitat Pompeu Fabra
  • 2
    1.2
    Universidad San Pablo - CEU
  • 2
    1.2
    IE Universidad
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(*) Universities younger than 15

U-Ranking for teaching vs
U-Ranking for research and innovation

There is a positive relationship between performance in teaching and in research and innovation among leading universities. However, this relationship is generally less defined. Therefore, considering the results of research and innovation as an approximation of teaching, the results may not be suitable, justifying the effort to use specific information on each area of university activity.

U-Ranking by AA. CC.

The performance of
regional university systems

The figure shows the averages of the U-Ranking 2022 index for all on-site universities, both public and private, in each region. There are large differences in performance among regional university systems, reaching up to 37 percentage points between the one with the highest performance and the one with the lowest.

2023 and 2022 comparison

The results obtained by universities in 2023 are highly correlated with those presented in the previous edition. The results confirm the remarkable stability of U-Ranking and U-Ranking Volume with few exceptions.

U-Ranking

U-Ranking Volume

Postgraduate Ranking 2022

U-Ranking 2022 offered a specific analysis of postgraduate studies - master and doctorate - in the universities of the Spanish University System.The report showed the evolution of these studies in the last decade and their different structure depending on the ownership of the university and area of study.

The analysis done is completed with the elaboration of a synthetic index based on 12 indicators that evaluate the performance of universities in the areas of the training process, quality, internationalization and employability of their postgraduate programs. This index allows Spanish universities to be ordered according to performance of their postgraduate studies, offering six postgraduate rankings: one for each area of study and another global that groups the information of all of them.


You can consult the complete analysis in the 2022 U-Ranking report


Global

  • Ranking
    Index
    University
  • 1
    1.5
    Universitat Pompeu Fabra
  • 2
    1.4
    Universidad de Navarra
  • 2
    1.4
    Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
  • 2
    1.4
    Universitat Ramon Llull
  • 3
    1.3
    Universitat Rovira i Virgili
  • 3
    1.3
    Universidad Carlos III
  • 3
    1.3
    Universidad de Salamanca
  • 3
    1.3
    Universitat de Barcelona
  • 3
    1.3
    Universidad Pontificia Comillas
  • 3
    1.3
    Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya
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(*) Universities younger than 15

Changes in the bachelor’s degree programs offered

Bachelor’s degrees created and eliminated in the last decade

The ninth edition of U-Ranking included a specific analysis of the changes in the offer of bachelor’s degree programs between the academic years 2010-2011 and 2020-2021, which considers their intensity in the different fields of knowledge, type of teaching/learning mode, differences between public and private centres, and how well the new offering meets the demands of students and the labor market.

From academic year 2010-2011 to 2020-2021, 1,760 bachelor’s degrees have been added and 629 have been discontinued, so the net increase during the period was 1,131 degrees, 44% more than in 2010. Most of the new degrees already existed in the SUE, but there are 190, between bachelor’s degrees and double degrees, which are new. Check the complete analysis in the U-Ranking 2021 report.

The launch of new degrees is strongly taking place in both public and private universities. However, although the total volume of new bachelor’s degrees is higher in public ones, with 716 new degrees in a decade compared to 415 in private universities, these ones have experienced a higher relative growth due, to a large extent, to the fact that many private universities have been recently created and are still in the process of structuring their degree offers.

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