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Exploring and Visualising Data in Education Assignment - US University League tables

Background information:

The Times Higher Education World University Rankings are designed to rank universities and the site contains further details on how the tables are obtained and the methodology used to construct the rankings.

The overall scores along with the scores for the 5 components (Teaching, Research, Citations, Industry Income and International Outlook) have been harvested for the top 50 US universities and are included in the excel worksheet usthes.xlsx The worksheet also contains a series of boxes (L2 to P2) containing the weights used to construct the overall scores and these can be modified to answer the questions below.

In this assignment you will play the role of the president / VC of one of the three University of California universities (San Diego, Santa Barbara or Davis) and be allocated to a group of 3 and will answer the questions below with this role in mind. Currently all 3 universities are within the top 30 in the US and would ideally like to be higher up the table.

1. It could be argued that the table weights research over teaching as 30% of the score comes from research and another 30% from citations (i.e. research papers) with only 30% of the score from teaching. There is a proposal to change these weights so that teaching goes up to 40% and research and citations down to 25% each.

Present how this will change the overall table for your senior team and discuss whether you as a university would be in favour of this change.

2. In the class you should have met with your group including the students representing the other 2 California universities to decide on weights that you wish to lobby THES to use. Present to your senior team how these weights change the overall table and impact on both the group of 5 University of California universities (including UCLA and Irvine) and your own university.

3. Consider the situation where rather than working as a group you wish to lobby the THES as a single institution. With the caveat that you cannot propose changes of more than 10% to any category decide on another set of weights to use. Present to your senior team how these weights change the overall table and impact on your own university and future direction.

4. Assuming that the lobbying of the THES has no impact and the weights have been set as they are for 2018 but that your University has come into a significant donation from a very wealthy alumni and wants to strategically spend the money over the next five years. Considering each of the 5 components in turn discuss what you might do to improve the scores on each component and decide ultimately on a strategy.

Attachment:- Assignment Files.rar