The QS World University Rankings is a portfolio of comparative college and university rankings compiled by Quacquarelli Symonds, a higher education analytics firm. Its first and earliest edition was published in collaboration with Times Higher Education (THE) magazine as Times Higher Education–QS World University Rankings, inaugurated in 2004 to provide an independent source of comparative data about university performance. In 2009, the two organizations parted ways to produce independent university rankings – the QS World University Rankings and THE World University Rankings.
QS's rankings portfolio has since been expanded to consist of the QS World University Rankings, the QS World University Rankings by Subject, four regional rankings tables (including Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, Europe, and the Arab region), several MBA rankings, and the QS Best Student Cities rankings. In 2022, QS launched the QS World University Rankings: Sustainability, and in 2023, it launched the QS World University Rankings: Europe. The rankings are intended to reflect and articulate university performance for the next academic year. Therefore, they are usually named for the year following that in which they are produced. The rankings are regarded as one of the most-widely read university rankings in the world, along with Academic Ranking of World Universities and Times Higher Education World University Rankings. According to Alexa Internet, it is the most widely viewed university ranking worldwide in 2020.
The ranking has been criticized for its overreliance on subjective indicators and reputation surveys, which tend to fluctuate over time and form a feedback loop. Concerns also exist regarding the global consistency and integrity of the data used to generate the QS rankings. The development and production of the rankings is overseen by QS Senior Vice President Ben Sowter, who in 2016 was ranked 40th in Wonkhe's Higher Education Power List, a list of what the organisation believed to be the 50 most influential figures in British higher education value.
History QS was founded by Nunzio Quacquarelli in 1990 to provide information and advice to students looking to study abroad. Since then, the company expanded to include a wider range of higher education-focused products and services before partnering with THE in 2004 to create the THE–QS World University Rankings.
A perceived need for an international ranking of universities was highlighted in December 2003 in Richard Lambert's review of university-industry collaboration in Great BritainLambert Review of Business-University Collaboration (since archived) for HM Treasury, the finance ministry of the United Kingdom. Amongst its recommendations were world university rankings, which Lambert said would help the UK gauge the global standing of its universities. Between 2004 and 2009, QS produced the rankings in partnership with THE. In 2009, THE announced they would produce their own rankings, the Times Higher Education World University Rankings, in partnership with Thomson Reuters. THE cited an asserted weakness in the methodology of the original rankings, as well as a perceived favoritism in the existing methodology for science over the humanities, as two of the key reasons for the decision to split with QS. THE created a new methodology with Thomson Reuters, and published the first Times Higher Education World University Rankings in September 2010.
QS publishes the rankings results in the world's media and has entered into partnerships with a number of outlets, including The Guardian in the United Kingdom and Chosun Ilbo in South Korea. The first rankings produced by QS independently of THE, and using QS's methodology, were released in September 2010; the second rankings were released a year later, in September 2011. QS designed its rankings to assess performance according to what it believes to be key aspects of a university's mission: teaching, research, nurturing employability, and internationalisation. QS has a global presence with offices in Europe, Asia, and the Americas and provides products and services related to student recruitment, events, and consulting services. In 2022, the firm's founder, Nunzio Quacquarelli, was appointed as the company's president. Jessica Turner serves as the company's chief executive officer, responsible for the firm's operations and strategy.
Rankings QS World University Rankings
The QS World University Rankings are released annually, typically in June. The 2023 edition featured 1418 institutions across 100 locations. The rankings are based on a methodology that considers a range of factors, including academic reputation, employer reputation, research impact, and internationalization. The methodology is reviewed annually to ensure that it remains relevant and up-to-date. The most recent methodology used by QS to calculate the rankings includes the following indicators:
Academic reputation Accounting for 40% of the overall score, academic reputation relates to academic excellence and the scholarly esteem in which the world's universities are held. It collates more than 150,000 responses from academics in more than 140 countries and locations. QS has previously published the job titles and geographical distribution of the participants in this survey.
Faculty/student ratio This indicator accounts for 15% of a university's score in the rankings. It is a classic measure used in various ranking systems as an indication of staff resources afforded to students, including teaching capacity, class size, curriculum development, lab and seminar delivery and pastoral care. QS has admitted that it is a limited metric, particularly in the face of modern enhancements in online teaching methods and content distribution.
Citations/faculty Citations of published research are among the most widely used inputs to national and global university rankings. The QS World University Rankings used citation data from Thomson (now Thomson Reuters) from 2004 to 2007, and since then has used data from Scopus, part of Elsevier. The total number of citations for a five-year period is divided by the number of academics in a university to yield the score for this measure, which accounts for 20% of a university's score in the rankings.
QS has explained that it uses this approach, rather than the citations per paper preferred for in other rankings systems because it reduces the impact of biomedical science on the overall picture – biomedicine has a ferocious "publish or perish" culture. Instead, QS attempts to measure the density of research-active staff at each institution, but issues remain about the use of citations in ranking systems, especially the fact that the arts and humanities generate comparatively few citations.QS Intelligence Unit | Citations per Faculty . Iu.qs.com. Retrieved on 2013-08-12.
Since 2015, QS has made methodological enhancements designed to remove the advantage institutions specializing in the Natural Sciences or Medicine previously received. This enhancement is termed faculty area normalization and ensures that an institution's citations count in each of QS's five key Faculty Areas is weighted to account for 20% of the final citations score.
QS has conceded the presence of some data-collection errors regarding citations per faculty in previous years' rankings.
One concern is the differences between the Scopus and Thomson Reuters databases. For major world universities, the two systems capture largely the same publications and citations. For less prominent institutions, Scopus has more non-English language and smaller-circulation journals in its database leading some critics to suggest that citation averages are skewed towards English-speaking universities. This area has been criticized for undermining universities that do not use English as their primary language."Global university rankings and their impact ,". "European University Association". Retrieved 3, September, 2012
Employer reputation QS's Employer Reputation indicator is obtained using another survey, like Academic Reputation, and accounts for 15% of an institution's overall score. The most recent edition surveyed some 99,000 employers at companies and organisations that hire graduates on a significant or global scale.
This survey was introduced in 2005 in the belief that employers track graduate quality, making this a barometer of teaching quality and the level of work readiness acquired by students, a famously problematic factor to measure. University standing here is of special interest to potential students, and acknowledging this was the impetus behind the inaugural QS Graduate Employability Rankings, published in November 2015. However, these rankings were subsequently discontinued in 2021, with its data rolled into the QS World University Rankings methodology.
Internationalization The final 10% of a university's score is derived from measures intended to capture their internationalization: half from their percentage of international students, and the other half from their percentage of international staff. This is of interest partly because it shows whether a university is putting effort into global collaboration and diversity, but also because it indicates global appeal for students and researchers around the world.QS Intelligence Unit | International Indicators . Iu.qs.com. Retrieved on 2013-08-12.
QS recently began distinguishing between International Faculty Ratio and International Student Ratio', both of which account for 5% of the total weightage. While the former evaluates the ratio of international faculty staff to overall staff, the latter assumes that Institutions that have a large number of international students should have better networking, cultural exchanges, a more diverse learning experience and alumni diversity.
Other factors Beginning with its 2024 rankings, QS implemented three new indicators to reflect the shifts in higher education, each of which accounts for 5% of the total weightage:
International Research Network, primarily referencing an institution's ability to create and sustain research partnerships and worldwide collaboration networks. Employment Outcomes, reflecting an institution's ability to ensure a high level of employability for their graduates. Sustainability, reflecting an institution's ability to demonstrate a sustainable existence.
+ QS World University Rankings: Global Top 25 Institution 2027 2026 2025 2024 2023 2022 2021 2020 2019 2018 Massachusetts Institute of Technology1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 Imperial College London=2 2 2 6 6 7 8 9 8 8 Stanford University=2 3 6 5 3 3 2 2 2 2 University of Oxford4 4 3 3 4 2 5 4 5 6 Harvard University5 5 4 4 5 5 3 3 3 3 University of Cambridge6 6 5 2 2 3 7 7 6 5 California Institute of Technology7 10 10 15 6 6 4 5 4 4 ETH Zurich=8 7 7 7 9 8 6 6 7 10 University College London=8 9 9 9 8 8 10 8 10 7 National University of Singapore10 8 8 8 11 11 11 11 11 15 University of Hong Kong 11 11 17 27 21 22 22 26 25 26 Nanyang Technological University12 12 15 26 19 12 13 11 12 11 Peking University 13 14 14 17 12 18 23 22 30 38 Tsinghua University14 =17 20 25 14 17 15 16 17 25 University of Pennsylvania15 15 11 12 13 13 16 15 19 19 Cornell University =16 16 16 13 20 21 18 14 14 14 Yale University=16 21 23 16 18 15 17 17 15 16 Chinese University of Hong Kong18 32 36 47 38 39 43 46 49 46 University of New South Wales19 20 19 19 45 43 44 43 45 45 Johns Hopkins University=2024=3228242525242117 University of California, Berkeley=20 =17 12 10 27 32 30 28 27 27 École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne=22=222636=16=1414182212 University of Melbourne=22 19 13 14 33 37 41 38 39 41 University of Chicago24 13 21 11 10 10 9 10 9 9 Technical University of Munich25=22283749=5050556164
QS World University Rankings: Regional Rankings