Research by the LH Martin Institute and the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) has produced a multi-dimensional profile of every Australian university.
Inspired by the European Commission’s U-Map and U-Multirank projects, the research team used data from numerous publicly available sources to present visual maps, or ‘sunbursts’, of each university’s activities and performance in the dimensions of teaching and learning, student profile, research involvement, knowledge exchange and international orientation.
Professor Leo Goedegebuure, Director of the LH Martin Institute and one of the project’s researchers, stressed that the profiles are not another attempt to rank universities.
The profiles capture a broad range of perspectives about each institution which current rankings do not provide. It is a transparency instrument for assessing an institution’s fit to its own mission, the public’s needs and priorities.
Dr Dan Edwards, Principal Research Fellow in the higher education research program at ACER, who was also part of the project, explained the profiles are based on existing data, but the visual representation of this information offers a new way of exploring diversity in Australian higher education.
University leaders can use the profiles to add perspective to institutions’ national and international ambitions, while Government policy makers can use them to better understand the diversity of universities and assist in defining the right mix of institutions to better serve Australia’s needs.
See
-
Profiling diversity of Australian universities
-
University profiles experiment aims for greater transparency
