# Evaluation and Prediction of Higher Education System Based on AHP-TOPSIS and LSTM Neural Network
## 3 Higher Education Evaluation System
### Datasets and Methodology  
In order to obtain the corresponding data of the selected indicator, we choose the following datasets: education at a glance, OECD indicators, world development indicators, world education report, web of science, China statistical yearbook. We select 8 representative countries (the United States, China, the United Kingdom, France, Australia, Egypt, Colombia and Vietnam) for data collection. These countries cover different levels of development and education. Each has its own focus on development of higher education. When selecting secondary indicators to evaluate the quality of higher education, we refer to the evaluation index system of QS World University ranking as shown in Table 1.  
At the same time, we encounter some obstacles. The evaluation system of QS ranking is comprehensive indeed, and its authority has been recognized all over the world. However, the latest QS ranking only includes 1300 universities in the world. These universities  
\begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c} \hline \hline
**Standard** & **Second-Level Indicators** & **Weight** \\ \hline \multirow{2}{*}{Research} & Academic Reputation & 40\% \\ \cline{2-3}  & Citations per faculty & 20\% \\ \hline \multirow{2}{*}{Teaching} & Faculty/Student Ratio & 20\% \\ \hline \multirow{2}{*}{Employment Ability of the Graduate} & Global Employer Reputation & 10\% \\ \hline \multirow{2}{*}{Internationalization} & International Faculty Ratio & 5\% \\ \cline{2-3}  & International Student Ratio & 5\% \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table}
Table 1: Evaluation indicator system of QS World University Ranking.  
Figure 1: Framework of evaluation model.  
can represent the top level of higher education in the world, but they cannot reflect the development status of some ordinary universities and colleges in higher education. Taking China as an example, according to the 2020 national statistical bulletin on the development of education issued by the Ministry of Education, there are 2738 ordinary colleges and universities in China, with a total number of 41.83 million people in all kinds of higher education. However, 93 Chinese universities are included in the latest QS ranking, accounting for only 3.4% of the number of Chinese universities. It can be seen that if we evaluate the average level of higher education in a country as a whole, we need to choose some indicators that can not only reflect the average level of higher education but also reflect the differences between top universities and other universities. In the national statistical bulletin on education development in 2020, we note that the teacher-student ratio of undergraduate colleges is 17.51:1 and that of junior colleges is 20.28:1. It can be seen that there are relatively few teacher resources in junior colleges. In addition, in the 2019-2020 undergraduate teaching quality report, we observed that there is also a big gap in the study abroad rate of colleges and universities at different levels. Finally, we choose the proportion of teachers and students, the rate of studying abroad and the number of colleges and universities in QS ranking as secondary indicators to evaluate the quality of higher education. The repeated use of indicators may increase the complexity of the model and lead to over-fitting of the model. However, if we only evaluate the quality of national higher education according to QS ranking, the accuracy of the model will be reduced. Considering that our model only contains higher-education-related data in recent decades and the amount of data is small, we think it is acceptable to slightly increase the complexity to improve the accuracy.