University of Malaya stands out as a rare success story, having achieved a swift and steady climb up the global university rankings. But rankings tell only part of a university’s story.
Given my role in driving academic performance enhancements at the University of Malaya, policymakers from emerging nations frequently consult me on global ranking strategies. Bangladesh is one such nation currently prioritising its standing in the QS rankings. In the modern globalised economy, higher education has transformed from a localised civic good into a highly competitive international marketplace. At the centre of this transformation lies the QS World University Rankings, an annual report card published by Quacquarelli Symonds (QS).
The QS World University Rankings serve as one of the most influential benchmarks for higher education globally. By evaluating institutions across diverse metrics, such as academic reputation, employer reputation and faculty-to-student ratios, the QS rankings shape the decisions of millions of students, educators and policymakers. For high school graduates, parents and university administrators alike, the release of these rankings has become a high-stakes event.
The QS rankings offer a helpful starting point for navigating global education. However, their rigid metrics are heavily criticised for distracting universities from the true purpose of higher learning. Like any standardised metric, the system has both distinct merits and noticeable limitations.
Merits: The primary strength of the QS University Ranking system is its ability to simplify an incredibly complex global landscape. For international students, comparing universities across cities such as Tokyo, Munich or Boston can feel overwhelming. QS provides a standardised, easily digestible benchmark that aids informed decision-making and offers a clear starting point for comparing thousands of universities across borders.
Furthermore, the ranking system heavily weights Employer Reputation and Academic Reputation through vast global surveys. QS assigns 15 percent to Employer Reputation and 30 percent to Academic Reputation. This inclusion of global survey data captures qualitative values that raw statistics miss, reflecting how degrees are perceived in the actual job market and academic community. By measuring how the industry views graduates, QS offers practical insight into global employability.
The rankings also foster healthy institutional competition. To maintain or improve their standing, universities worldwide are incentivised to upgrade their research output, modernise facilities, maintain high standards, modernise their curricula, actively recruit diverse international talent and foster international research collaborations. This drive ultimately elevates global educational standards.
In developing nations, climbing the QS ladder is often used as a legitimate tool by governments to audit public spending and drive national universities towards global excellence.
Demerits: Despite these benefits, critics argue that the QS rankings create an unhealthy ‘prestige trap’ that reduces the rich, multifaceted nature of education to flawed numerical scores. The primary criticism lies in its methodology. For years, Academic Reputation, essentially measured through the QS Academic Reputation Survey, accounted for a massive 40 percent of a school’s score, although this was recently adjusted to 30 percent alongside new metrics such as sustainability. Critics argue that this introduces a heavy bias towards historic, English-speaking institutions, rewarding past prestige rather than current educational quality.
This approach also creates a ‘halo effect’, whereby historically famous universities maintain high ranks based on past prestige rather than current educational quality. The metrics also lean heavily towards research output, often penalising universities that specialise primarily in high-quality undergraduate teaching or regional community development.
Additionally, the emphasis on Citations per Faculty heavily favours hard sciences and medicine, where research papers are published frequently and cited rapidly. Conversely, the humanities and social sciences, which often rely on books and localised qualitative research, are inherently penalised. The system also exhibits a distinct linguistic and geographic bias. Because the ranking heavily values citations in English-language journals, non-English-speaking institutions, particularly those in Asia, Latin America and Africa, are often systematically undervalued despite their immense local and regional impact.
Perhaps the most troubling demerit is how rankings alter institutional behaviour. To chase higher ranks, some universities shift funding away from undergraduate teaching towards high-impact research or focus heavily on recruiting wealthy international students purely to boost their International Student Ratio score. This commercialisation can alienate local student populations and compromise the quality of classroom instruction.
Finally, the focus on internationalisation metrics, such as the ratio of international faculty and students, can reward wealthy universities capable of aggressive global marketing rather than those focusing resources on equitable local education.
Conclusion: The QS World University Rankings function as a powerful tool for global transparency and institutional accountability, offering invaluable insights for international student mobility. However, their heavy reliance on reputational surveys and English-centric research metrics means they provide an incomplete picture of an institution’s worth.
Ultimately, stakeholders should treat the QS rankings as a single data point among many rather than an absolute measure of educational excellence. They provide a valuable macro-lens view of higher education but should never be treated as the definitive truth of an institution’s value.
A university’s true worth cannot be entirely captured by algorithms, citation counts or reputational surveys. For students and policymakers alike, rankings should serve as a starting point for exploration, not the final destination. It is therefore the universities themselves, along with their principals, that should determine the real essence of a university while also responding to the metrics of QS rankings.
Dr. Gazi Mahabubul Alam is a Professor of Education Policy and Economics, Taylor’s University, Malaysia, and Former Chief Consultant and Professor, Academic Performance Enhancement, University of Malaya, Malaysia.
[The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the position of The Daily Bonik Barta or the organisation they work for.]