Cluster analysis of Ecuadorian universities according to their position in the world ranking.

Abstract

The analysis of university rankings and their variables helps to make decisions at the ministerial level within each country, resulting necessary the grouping of these institutions in clusters that maximize intra-group homogeneity and inter-group heterogeneity, for decision making. The objective was to form the clusters of the 65 Ecuadorian universities, according to the positioning of the variables that make up their world ranking. It was an observational, retrospective, cross-sectional and analytical study, using k-means and hypotheses through ANOVA. As a result, three clusters of Ecuadorian universities were formed, according to their positioning in the world ranking. It is concluded that by means of clustering, Ecuadorian universities were satisfactorily grouped for better decision making.