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    Exploring the QS World University Rankings 2014

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    The methodology used to construct the QS World University Rankings can be deconstructed as follows:

    1. Academic reputation (40%)

    Academic reputation is measured using a global survey, in which academics are asked to identify the institutions where they believe the best work is currently taking place within their field of expertise.

    For the 2014/15 edition, the rankings draw on almost 63,700 responses from academics worldwide, collated over three years. Only participants’ most recent responses are used, and they cannot vote for their own institution. Regional weightings are applied to counter any discrepancies in response rates.

    The advantage of this indicator is that it gives a more equal weighting to different discipline areas than research citation counts. Whereas citation rates are far higher in subjects like biomedical sciences than they are in English literature, for example, the academic reputation survey weights responses from academics in different fields equally.

    It also gives students a sense of the consensus of opinion among those who are by definition experts. Academics may not be well positioned to comment on teaching standards at other institutions, but it is well within their remit to have a view on where the most significant research is currently taking place within their field.

    2. Employer reputation (10%)

    The employer reputation indicator is also based on a global survey, taking in almost 28,800 responses for the 2014/15 edition. The survey asks employers to identify the universities they perceive as producing the best graduates. This indicator is unique among international university rankings.

    The purpose of the employer survey is to give students a better sense of how universities are viewed in the job market. A higher weighting is given to votes for universities that come from outside of their own country, so it’s especially useful in helping prospective students to identify universities with a reputation that extends beyond their national borders. 

    3. Student-to-faculty ratio (20%)

    This is a simple measure of the number of academic staff employed relative to the number of students enrolled. In the absence of an international standard by which to measure teaching quality, it provides an insight into the universities that are best equipped to provide small class sizes and a good level of individual supervision.

    4. Citations per faculty (20%)

    This indicator aims to assess universities’ research output. A ‘citation’ means a piece of research being cited (referred to) within another piece of research. Generally, the more often a piece of research is cited by others, the more influential it is. So the more highly cited research papers a university publishes, the stronger its research output is considered.

    QS collects this information using Scopus, the world’s largest database of research abstracts and citations. The latest five complete years of data are used, and the total citation count is assessed in relation to the number of academic faculty members at the university, so that larger institutions don’t have an unfair advantage.

    5  6. International faculty ratio (5%)  international student ratio (5%)

    The last two indicators aim to assess how successful a university has been in attracting students and faculty members from other nations. This is based on the proportion of international students and faculty members in relation to overall numbers. Each of these contributes 5% to the overall ranking results.

    Top Ten
     

    Place

    University

    1

    MIT

    2=

    Cambridge

    2=

    Imperial College London

    4

    Harvard

    5

    Oxford

    6

    University College London

    7

    Stanford

    8

    California Institute of Technology (Caltech)

    9

    Princeton

    10

    Yale

    Countries with Universities in the Top Hundred
     

    Country      

    Number of Universities

    USA

    28

    UK

    19

    Australia

    8

    Netherlands                                              

    7

    Canada

    5

    Switzerland

    4

    Japan

    4

    Germany

    3

    China

    3

    Korea

    3

    Hong Kong

    3

    Denmark

    2

    Singapore

    2

    France

    2

    Sweden

    2

    Ireland

    1

    Taiwan

    1

    Finland

    1

    Belgium

    1

    New Zealand

    1

    Top Ranked in Region
     

    North America 

    MIT

    Africa

    University of Cape Town

    Europe

    Cambridge
    Imperial College London

    Latin America

    Universidade de Sao Paulo                                    

    Asia

    National University of Singapore                                    

    Central and Eastern Europe  

    Lomonosov Moscow State University                                   

    Arab World

    King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals                                     

    Middle East

    Hebrew University of Jerusalem                                  

    Noise Index

    In the top 20, this year’s QS world rankings are less volatile than the previous edition but more so than the THE rankings or Shanghai ARWU. The top 20 universities in 2013 rose or fell an average of 1.45 places. The most remarkable change was the rise of Imperial College and Cambridge to second place behind MIT and ahead of Harvard.
     

    Ranking

    Average Place Change
     of Universities in the top 20 

    QS World Rankings 2013-2014

    1.45

    QS World Rankings 2012-2013

    1.70

    ARWU 2013 -2014 

    0.65

    Webometrics 2013-2014

    4.25

    Center for World University Ranking (Jeddah)
    2013-2014 

    0.90

    THE World Rankings 2012-2013

    1.20

    Looking at the top 100 universities, the  QS rankings  are little different from last year. The average university in the top 100 moved up or down 3.94 places compared to 3.97 between 2012 and 2013. These rankings are more reliable than this year’s ARWU, which was affected by the new lists of highly cited researchers, and last year’s THE rankings.
     

    Ranking

    Average Place Change
     of Universities in the top 100 

    QS World Rankings 2013-14

    3.94

    QS World Rankings 2012-2013

    3.97

    ARWU 2013 -2014 

    4.92

    Webometrics 2013-2014

    12.08

    Center for World University Ranking (Jeddah)
    2013-2014 

    10.59

    THE World Rankings 2012-2013

    5.36