An Empirical Research On Credibility Of Chinese University Ranking

With the development of the popularization process of higher education, the competition among universities is becoming fierce, their school running level and education quality has attracted widespread attention from all social sectors. The university ranking as a new form of higher education evaluation marks the beginning of evaluating the universities by the society, and becomes prevalence all over the world. Comparing with the university ranking of "U.S. News & World Report", Chinese university ranking starts late but develops rapidly. A credible ranking can have a good effect on society and harmonious interaction between universities and society. However, it is a pity that the university ranking is subject to some disputes and doubts from the public, its credibility is in a bad state at present. What's more, most scholars have paid more attention to the theoretical analysis of normative research paradigm while empirical research is inadequate. Research method and perspective appears relatively single.Facing realistic plights and inadequate theoretical researches of Chinese University Ranking, this paper establishes the scale of university ranking and makes the evaluation on three representative university rankings on the base of the scale of credibility in news media and with the combination of the specific national conditions and particularities of education. Then, analyses influencing factors on the credibility of Chinese University Ranking and studies improvement thoughts and countermeasures in order to promote reforms of university rankings and bring their social benefits into full play according to the scale of university ranking and comparing with the most authoritative university ranking of "U.S. News & World Report" in the United States.The full text consists of six parts:The first part mainly puts forward the problems on the basis of actual and theoretical backgrounds, points out the significance and methods of this research, and gives a general introduction to the research thinking and framework of this paper.The second part summarizes relative literature at home and abroad on the foundation of analyzing the domestic and foreign research situation of university ranking, credibility and the credibility of university ranking, it points out the limitation of domestic research in the content, methods and thinking. Based on the explanation of the connotation of the credibility, this part defines the core of the research on credibility and elucidates the evaluation methods of credibility. These are basic theory to establish a scale for the credibility of the university ranking in the text below.The third part establishes the framework of the scale in this research and designs the questionnaire for the credibility of the university ranking according to the credibility theory of news media, which combines with the specific national conditions of China and particularity of education. It assesses to the university ranking, which put forward by the three evaluation institutions of Guangdong Research Academy of Management Science, Netbig, and China Schoolmate Union.The fourth part checks up the reliability and validity of the scale by factor analysis, applies principal components analysis method to determine the weight of indexes in this scale, and calculates the credibility of the three university rankings by mean analysis and weighted average method on the base of investigation data. By the comparison of this three index systems, it analyses the reasons why the credibility of the ranking list of China Schoolmate Union is higher and one index of Guangdong Research Academy of Management Science and Netbig gets higher scores.The fifth part analyses influencing factors on the credibility of Chinese University Ranking and studies improvement thoughts and countermeasures in order to strengthen the credibility and attraction of university ranking and bring their social benefits into full play according to the scale of university ranking as compared with the most authoritative university ranking of "U.S. News & World Report" in the United States.The sixth part summarizes conclusion of this paper, illuminates the innovation points of this paper and pointes out the limit of this research and the trend of future research. At last, it is expected that this paper will play a role by way of introduction so that other researchers may draw forth by abler people and research in this field.