The objective of U-Ranking is to analyze the performance of Spanish universities and offer comparable and synthetic images of these higher education institutions. Based on the study of the universities’ activities in teaching, research and innovation, the project develops different rankings that are analyzed in depth in this report.

The 4th edition of U-Ranking provides information on a total of 61 Spanish universities, all of the public ones and 13 private. The report analyzes the position of these universities in each classification and also compares the U-Ranking results with those of other well-known rankings to evaluate their similarities and differences. The report shows the teaching, research and innovation results of the universities and also provides an analysis of the sensitivity of the results to changes in the importance given to these activities. Finally, the results obtained in the 2015 and 2016 editions are compared and the differences in performance of the university systems of the different Spanish regions are analyzed.

This edition examines, for the first time, the evolution of the performance of the public university system from the results obtained in the four editions of U-Ranking (2013-2016). The report also includes an exercise in which the Spanish universities are grouped into seven strategic groups based on their organizational characteristics, available resources, and their environment. It analyzes the performance of each group and evaluates the impact that these initial resource allocations, as well as organizational and environmental characteristics, have on their outcomes.