Interesting Times

The announced divorce of Times Higher Education and QS looks like the beginning of a new era for international university rankings.

QS have announced that nothing will be changed. According to director Nunzio Quacquarelli, the QS World University Rankings, as they will now be called, will employ the same consistent and credible methodology and will be led by the same team of Quacquarelli, John O'Leary, Martin Ince and Ben Sowter that created the rankings in 2004.

The QS rankings have of course been very far from consistent. There have in fact been several significant changes since 2004. But the change of name may prove to be even more significant Many people, especially in the US and Southeast Asia are unaware that these rankings are not produced by THE and some actually are under the impression that they come from "the Times of London", a name sufficient in itself to guarantee the highest quality. Without the magic name will the QS rankings have the same impact?

Meanwhile, THE will have problems of its own. if they are only going to assess citations and publications using data from Thomson Reuters, they will end up producing a clone of the Shanghai rankings. If they try to be more adventurous they will run into the problem of time. Spending a few months waiting for advice from their editorial board (composed of university administrators?) and reading comments from readers could mean that they will not be able to produce a ranking in time. It might be a clever ploy for QS to bring their rankings forward by a month or two causing another problem for THE.

And what about the US News and World Report? They have their own arrangement with QS that will apparently remain unchanged. But will red-blooded Americans really go on accepting data, not from "the Times of London" but from a consulting firm that keeps getting North Carolina universities mixed up?

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