A Markov Chain Approach for the Evaluation of Global Performance of Universities of South Africa

Abstract

The Markov chain (MC) technique is used preliminarily in the evaluation of the ranking of selected institutions of higher learning of South Africa. The data related to Scimago is used to illustrate the practical implication of MC. A random selection of universities was conducted for applying the MC technique., i.e., a middle and a bottom performing universities are selected. Different states were defined to carry out the estimation of the steady state of the Markov Chain to predict theoretically the future state of their rankings. These preliminary results showed that the former had 2 states with probability distributions of (0, 1) respectively, whereas the latter had 5 states with probability distribution of (0.892, 0.035, 0.035, 0.035, 0.01). This approach could be replicated to the rest of institutions of higher learning and considering other ranking metrics.