Swiss Up (in association with L’Hebdo newspaper)

In a similar vein to the rankings produced in Germany by Die Zeit and CHE, the SwissUp ranking offers students the option to create their own university ranking based on their desired study options and the quality indicators that are most important to them. Consumers choosing the “My Ranking” option choose five indicators — from 19 — to build their own personal ranking within a specific field and discipline.

The last full evaluation of all disciplines was conducted in 2003, and results for this assessment are available in English. The 2006 assessments, available in French and German, concentrate on the exact and natural sciences as well as medicine. The ranking is based on a comparison with German and Austrian Universities. The 2005 ranking concentrates on law and economics.

Methodology

The ranking uses data from the Swiss Federal Statistical Office, official reports from the Swiss National Research Fund, and from the National Commission for Technology and Innovation. The ranking also uses data from a student survey consisting of 37 questions. In 2003, the sample size was 4350 students.

Rankings are not provided for institutions as a whole, rather for specific disciplines across institutions. SwissUp does, however, provide institutional profiles for students based on three sets of indicators: is the institution “research” oriented? Is it “labor” market-oriented? Or, is it “coaching” oriented?

The ranking assesses all 10 Swiss universities and two federal institutes of technology. Institutions in 2003 were assessed across ten broad disciplines: hard sciences, social sciences, economic sciences, computer science and communication systems, engineering, law, medicine & pharmacy, architecture, language and literature, historical science, and culture. The 2005 and 2006 rankings targeted a select group of disciplines (see above).

Once a discipline has been chosen, all institutions with a faculty offering programs in that discipline are displayed with an ordinal ranking for each of the six indicators. Results displayed using the “MyRanking” tool will also provide an average of all the indicator ranks to provide consumers with a ranking of institutions according to their chosen discipline and indicators.

The six indicators employed by SwissUp are:

• Appeal (measured by an institution’s ability to recruit students from outside its canton or standard recruiting area).
• Coaching (teaching resources per 100 students).
• Relevance to the job market (student survey data).
• Student satisfaction (student survey data).
• Quality of faculty and courses (student survey)
• Research subsidies (data from the federal government)

Results

Results across all disciplines were last collected in 2003 and can be accessed at: www.swissup.com/r2k3_main_2.cfm?upid=EN.

Results from 2005 and 2006 (French and German) concentrating on sciences, medicine, law and economics can be accessed at: www.swissupranking.com/