The THE Survey

Times Higher Education and its partner Thomson Reuters have announced the completion of their survey of academic opinion. There were 17,554 responses from 137 countries, nearly a third more than last year. That means nearly 31,000 responses over the last two years but THE, in contrast to their rivals, QS, will only count responses to this year's survey.

QS have still not closed their survey so it looks as though they might well be push the number of responses to their survey over 17,500 and claim victory. THE, no doubt, will point out that all of their respondents are new ones and that QS are counting respondents from 2010 and 2009.

THE have indicated the number of responses but not the number of survey forms that were sent out. So, the response rate for the survey is still unknown. This is more important for judging the validity of the survey than just the number of responses.