Something from QS

Finally something has appeared on the QS Intelligence Unit Blog. Ben Sowter writes:


"The QS World University Rankings will continue to be published in 2010, albeit through a number of new channels which we are working on. At present, there are no plans to alter the methodology, in fact it seems important to maintain some comparability in a time when a number of new and different interpretations are going to emerge. So in 2010, we are focused on improving our engagement with institutions, redesigning some of our data collection systems to be more user-friendly and intuitive, and our work in specific regional and discipline oriented contexts."

I am not sure that keeping the methodology is a good idea but it is understandable. However, even with the same basic methods there are a couple of minor changes that might help QS find a niche in the "holistic" ranking market as Times Higher appears to focus on making fine distinctions among leading research institutions. One would be to use the academic survey to ask about general excellence or activities other than research. The other would be to remove non-teaching faculty from the faculty totals when calculating faculty student ratio. As it is, the QS rankings are heavily weighted towards research, with an academic survey asking about research, an indicator based on citations and a teaching resources measure that includes researchers who never teach.

Now that QS have done an Asian ranking and are apparently preparing Arab and Latin American ones, they could also also outflank THE by preparing survey forms in additional languages. They offered a Spanish option last year. They ought to have the resources to produce forms in Chinese, French, German. Arabic and Japanese.