Measuring and comparing higher education quality between countries worldwide

Area of Science:

• Education Policy
• Educational Measurement
• International Education

Background:

• Current methods for assessing higher education quality rely on disparate indicators.
• A unified measure is needed for effective international comparison and policy-making.
• Publicly available data from the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) offers a rich source for such an assessment.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a unidimensional interval scale for measuring national higher education quality.
• To create a single, comprehensive metric from various quality indicators.
• To facilitate international comparisons and inform educational policy.

Main Methods:

• Utilized the Rasch partial credit model for scale construction.
• Employed publicly available UNESCO data on higher education indicators.
• Established a unidimensional interval scale to represent country-level quality.

Main Results:

• Successfully created a single measure representing each country's higher education quality.
• Demonstrated the feasibility of using the Rasch model for this purpose.
• The developed scale allows for robust cross-country comparisons and trend analysis.

Conclusions:

• A single, reliable scale for higher education quality is achievable using the Rasch model and UNESCO data.
• This new metric can significantly aid in monitoring, comparing, and improving global education quality.
• Further implications and extensions of this scale are discussed for future research and policy.