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Times Higher Education  (THE) has just published its 2017 reputation rankings which include 100 universities. These are based on a survey distributed between January and March of this year and will be included, after standardisation, in the 2017-18 (or 2018) World University Rankings scheduled for publication in a few months. In the forthcoming world rankings the reputation survey will be divided into two metrics in the research and teaching indicator groups, with a combined weighting of 33 percent. The survey asked about research and postgraduate teaching but since the correlation between these two questions is very high there is effectively only one indicator. The QS world rankings released last week included scores derived from two surveys, one of academics with a 40% weighting and one of employers with 10%. The academic survey was concerned only with research. The methodology of the THE survey is relatively simple. The respondents are drawn from the database of researchers wi...

International university rankings have become a substantial industry since the first appearance of the Shanghai rankings (Academic Ranking of World Universities or ARWU) back in 2003. The various rankings are now watched closely by governments and media and for some students they play a significant role in choosing universities, They have become a factor in national higher education policies and are an important element in the race to enter and dominate the lucrative transnational higher education market. In Malaysia a local newspaper,   Utusan Malaysia, recently had a full page on the latest QS world rankings including a half page of congratulations from the Malaysian Qualification Agency for nine universities who are part of a state-backed export drive. Reaction to international rankings often goes to one of two extremes, either outright rejection or uncritical praise, sometimes descending into grovelling flattery that would make Uriah Heep ashamed (the revere...