How They Did It

According to university administrators, universities rise in the THE-QS rankings because of enlightened leadership, quality control exercises like key performance indicators, ISO compliance, professional development and so on, increasing the quantity and impact of research and internationalisation. When they fall it is, according to adminstrators, because of the manifest bias of the rankings or, according to disgruntled outsiders, beacause of adminsitrative deficiencies.

In this year's rankings, there have been quite a few substantial changes in both directions between 2008 and 2009. Here are some of the fortunate cases who experienced an improvement and some comments on what actually contributed to the changes.

University College London
Rose from 7th place (total score 98.1 ) to 4th (99), just behind Yale, largely because of an improvement of 2 points for the academic survey, which has a weighting of 40%.

Princeton
Rose from 12th (95.7) to 8th (96.6) mainly because of an improvement in the student faculty ratio from 75 to 82 despite falling on 3 other indicators.

University of Toronto
A big improvement from 41st (81.1) to 29th (85.3) largely due to a whopping improvement in the faculty student ratio from 18 to 63, counteracting a fall for citations per faculty from 100 to 74.

University of Alberta
Rose from 74th (72.9) to 59th (75.4). This was almost entirely because of an improvement on the recruiter review from 48 to 71 points.

University of Oslo
A spectacular ascent from 177th (57.5) to 101st (62.9) in which strong gains on academic suvey, recruiter review and faculty student ratio (weighting of 70%) outweighed losses for citations per faculty and internationalisation (weighting of 30%).

Pohang University of Science and Technology
Rose 50 places from 184th to 134th propelled by an improvement in the academic survey from 37 to 53 points.

Keio University
Another remarkable rise from 214th (53.0) to 142nd (61.6) resulting from an improvement of 6 points on the academic survey and 38 for faculty student ratio, tempered by a 9 point fall for citations per faculty.

Chulalongkorn University
An improvement of 28 places caused mainly by a rise of 10 points on the academic survey.

Yonsei University
Rose from 203rd ( 54.1) to 151st (60.3). An improvement of 20 points for the academic survey more than compensated for declines in 4 other indicators.

In general then, ascent and descent within these rankings depends to a very large extent on the academic survey and faculty student ratio followed by the recruiter review. Changes in citations per faculty and international faculty and students have little impact, at least in the short run.