World-class universities and technological development: Unanswered questions
The geopolitical turbulence dictates the need to transform the science and education sphere and reconsider the role of universities in today’s world. The article deals with the issue of defining and identifying world-class universities (WCU) and their connection with the technological development of the countries, where they are located. In particular, the research considers the problem of the validity (adequacy) of the WCU rankings. Methodologically, the study relies on the global and subject rankings of universities compiled by leading rating agencies. The paper proposes a modified algorithm to increase the accuracy of the WCU identification. For the applied calculations, the paper uses data from five ranking products: Quacquarelli Symonds (QS), Times Higher Education (THE), Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU), Center for World University Rankings (CWUR) and National Taiwan University Ranking (NTU). According to the results, Russia has only one WCU, which is at the stage of losing this status. In order to check the validity of the list of WCU, the research suggests the validity index that takes into account the completeness of the representation of universities of the Nuclear Club countries in the above list. Calculations demonstrate that this index amounts to 43.3 %, which indicates that modern rating sources of information perform extremely poorly for Russia and Asian countries. The research concludes that the existing ideas about WCU, as well as the methods for their identification, no longer correspond to the new realities, and insists that the central property of WCU should be direct participation in real high-tech projects of the highest (world) level and a significant contribution made due to this to the development of the national economy.