Despite methodological changes producing significant volatility in the latest QS Rankings, reputation continues to be a driver of success with seven World 100 Reputation Network member featuring in the top 25.
QS introduced major tweaks to their methodology for this year’s rankings, with Academic Reputation scores decreasing from 40% to 30% of the overall score and the Employer Reputation increasing to 15%.
Rising Down Under
Australian universities saw the most dramatic ranking improvements this year, with W100 Members University of Melbourne (14, up 19), University of Sydney (=19, up 21) and UNSW Sydney (=19, up 26) all entering the top 20. Wollongong and University of Newcastle also saw dramatic rises.
These increases may partly reflect the strong performance of these institutions in reputation with global employers over the years. QS takes five years of data from its reputation surveys into account when compiling its ranking.
QS also introduced three new measures – Internataional Research Network, Employment Outcomes and Sustainability. Australian universities also performed strongly in these new metrics, helping to boost their overall rankings.
Other strong performers amongst W100 members included National University of Singapore (8), which entered the top 10 for the first time. UCL (9) retained its top 100 position. University of Toronto saw a huge leap from 34 to 21. LSE was a big riser, up to 45 from 56.
New sustainability metric also driving rises
A number of UK universities saw their overall rank improving, including Bristol (55, up 6), Glasgow (76, up 5), Birmingham (84, up 7), Exeter (153, up 10), Queen’s University Belfast (202, up 29), and Aberdeen (208, up 12). Strong performances in the new Sustainability metric helped to drive some of those improvements.
Amongst Canadian universities, Western (114, up 58) and Waterloo (112, up 42) were amongst the biggest risers, helped by a scores of 99.6 and 97.1 for Sustainability. Queens (209, up 37) also scored strongly, reflecting their recent No 3 global position in THE’s Impact Rankings. Concordia (387) saw the biggest jump of all, up 164 places.
In Europe, Bologna (154, up 13) and UCD (171, up 10) both improved scores. Asian W100 member universities, other than NUS, fared less well.
With so many changes to the methodology of the QS rankings this year , universities will be analysing the impacts on their performance and that of competitors, and reflecting on how they describe these changes to key stakeholders.
World 100 will be looking in more detail at the implications of the changes to the reputation scores in the latest rankings – watch out for further analysis.
