QS World University Rankings were conceived to present a multi-faceted view of the relative strengths of the world's leading universities. The research yields results on 600 universities and the rankings are compiled based on six distinct indicators. The main rankings table evaluates six key aspects of university activity using the most recent data available at the time of initial publication: peer review; citations per faculty (research quality); student faculty ratio (teaching quality); recruiter review (graduate employability ) ; numbers of international faculty, and, international students (international outlook). Understanding the ranking indicators:
- ACADEMIC PEER REVIEW
The academic peer review is the centrepiece of the QS World University Rankings® and is based on an online survey distributed to academics worldwide. The criterion has been alloted a weighted average of 40 per cent. Results are compiled based on three years' worth of responses totalling over 13,000 in 2010. Respondents are not permitted to submit their own institution or to respond more than once (their latest response is counted). Weightings are applied both geographically and by discipline to ensure as fair a representative spread as possible.
- EMPLOYER REVIEW
The employer review indicator is based on a global online survey, this time distributed to employers. Results are again based on three years' worth of "latest response" data, totalling over 5,000 in 2010. Geographical weightings are applied to ensure fair representation from key regions of the world. It has been given weightage of 10 percent.
- FACULTY/STUDENT RATIO
Faculty/student ratio is used in many ranking systems and evaluations in the world, and while it may not be a perfect measure of teaching quality, it is the most globally available and accessible measure of commitment to teaching and has 20 per cent weightage in these rankings.
- CITATIONS PER FACULTY
Citations are a widely used, conventional measure of research strength. A citation is a reference to one academic publication in the text of another. The more citations a publication receives the better it is perceived to be, the more highly cited papers a university publishes, the stronger it can be considered to be. As a measure, this is somewhat geared towards scientific and technical subjects, which is why it carries just 20 per cent of the weight. The source used in this evaluation is Scopus, the world's largest abstract and citation database of research literature. The latest five complete years of data are used. The total citation count is factored against the number of faculty in order to take into account the size of the institution.
- INTERNATIONAL FACTORS
In today's increasingly globalized world, the most successful universities have to attract the world's best students and faculty. Simple evaluations of the proportion of international students and international faculty serve as indicators of an institution's international attractiveness.
These indicators are then combined using standard statistical methods to yield the overall scores that are seen in the results tables. This again has the weighted average of 10 per cent.
- QS Classifications
QS has introduced a system which categorises each university on 12 different measures, based on whether the university is a specialist institution, is a general university and/or has a medical school, its number of students, and finally the research productivity of the university.
Arts and humanities-focused universities produce fewer research papers than science-focused ones. In this way, sub-rankings can be drawn by classification. QS also publishes sub-rankings by the five broad subject categories defined earlier: life sciences, natural sciences, IT and engineering, the social sciences, and the arts and humanities.
QS has been working to ensure that students make an informed choice and for this they are constantly, year on year working to provide the scholars with right information to ease their process of choosing the right university.
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