Monday, October 01, 2012

Well,  they would, wouldn't they?

Times Higher Education has published the results of a survey by IDP, a student recruitment agency:

The international student recruitment agency IDP asked globally mobile students which of the university ranking systems they were aware of. The Times Higher Education World University Rankings attracted more responses than any other ranking - some 67 per cent.This was some way ahead of any others. Rankings produced by the careers information company Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) garnered 50 per cent of responses, and the Shanghai Academic Rankings of World Universities (ARWU) received 15.8 per cent.Asked which of the global rankings they had used when choosing which institution to study at, 49 per cent of students named the THE World University Rankings, compared to 37 per cent who named QS and 6.7 per cent who named the ARWU and the Webometrics ranking published by the Spanish Cybermetrics Lab, a research group of the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC).


At the top of the page is a banner about IDP being proudly associated with the THE rankings. Also, IDP, which is in the student recruitment trade, is a direct competitor of QS.

The data could be interpreted differently. More respondents were aware of the THE rankings and had not used them than knew of the QS rankings and had not used them.

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