QS Stars Again

The New York Times has an article by Don Guttenplan on the QS Stars ratings which award universities one to five stars according to eight criteria, some of which are already assessed by the QS World University Rankings and some of which are not. The criteria are teaching quality, innovation and knowledge transfer, research quality, specialist subject, graduate employability, third mission, infrastructure and internationalisation. 

The article has comments from rankings experts Ellen Hazelkorn, Simon Marginson and Andrew oswald.

The QS Stars system does raise issues about commercial motivations and conflict of interests. Nonetheless, it has to be admitted that it does fill a gap in the current complex of international rankings. The Shanghai, QS and Times Higher Education rankings may be able to distinguish between Harvard and Cornell or Oxford and Manchester but they rank only a fraction of the world's universities. There are national ranking and rating systems but so far anyone wishing to compare middling universities in different countries has very little information available.

There is, however, the problem that making distinction among little known and mediocre universities, a disproportionate number of which are located in Indonesia,  means a loss of discrimination at the top or near top. The National University of Ireland Galway, Ohio State University and Queensland University of Technology get the same five stars as Cambridge and Kings College London.

The QS Stars has potential to offer a broader assessment of university quality but it would be better for everybody if it was kept completely separate from the QS World University Rankings.