The rankings are an increasingly important tool for universities, especially those who recruit international students. These students often weigh the ranking alongside their personal experience and recommendations from peers when choosing a university. In some cases, they may also prioritise factors like location, language of instruction and specific program offerings.
However, while the ranking system is popular, it’s not without its critics. As Ellen Hazelkorn points out in her article, University rankings: there’s room for error and’malpractice’, the methodologies behind these rankings can be problematic. The fact is that no ranking can fully capture a university’s contribution to the world, and each one has its own set of indicators and weightings that reflect the aims and priorities of its own organization.
For example, the QS World Rankings include Faculty Research and Academic Reputation indicators which reflect how much a university invests in its own research and how highly it ranks its professors. However, these are not necessarily the same as research intensity or impact, which is measured by bibliometric indicators. In addition, a university’s international student and staff ratio is weighed – but this is not the same as its ‘internationality’.
Furthermore, the World Rankings only cover about 3% of the world’s universities, and renowned, well-established institutions from developed countries tend to dominate. This is why, for example, Indian universities are rarely featured in global rankings, even though many of them offer excellent education. However, if you are considering a particular subject, it is worth checking the QS Rankings by Subject or THE World Rankings by Subject, which allow you to look at individual disciplines.