Assessing the Academic Performance of Turkish Universities in 2023: A MEREC-WEDBA Hybrid Methodology Approach

Research and reporting on university rankings serve as valuable tools for students in evaluating universities and understanding their current performance status. Within academic literature, university rankings are established using diverse criteria across various domains, each carrying varying degrees of importance. This study adopts a multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) perspective to analyze the academic performance ranking of Turkish Universities in 2023. Data sourced from the 2023 reports of sixty-one universities from Times Higher Education (THE) serve as the basis for this research, with THE indicators—teaching, research, citations, industry income, and international outlook—considered as primary research criteria. The Method based on the Removal Effects of Criteria (MEREC) method is employed to ascertain criterion weights, while the Weighted Euclidean Distance-Based Approach (WEDBA) method is utilized for university ranking. The study identifies "citations" as the criterion of highest significance. Notably, the top-performing universities in the ranking include Çankaya University, Fırat University, and Bahçeşehir University. Furthermore, by comparing the rankings from this study with THE university rankings, the research offers tailored suggestions for universities. This study underscores the importance of deriving criterion weights from university performance datasets rather than relying on fixed weights, facilitating a more nuanced approach to university rankings. Moreover, it presents THE performance rankings for sixty-one Turkish universities, offering valuable insights for strategic planning within the university sector.