By Richard Holmes
The recent publication of regional rankings by QS (Quacquarelli Symonds) and Times Higher Education (THE) was received with scepticism in some countries and universities, reflecting negative perceptions of the commercial rankers.
A few years ago, it seemed that regional and speciality rankings were the future of university rankings. The rationale was that regions, countries, research communities and disciplines had distinct priorities and were best served by rankings tailored to their specific needs.
An additional benefit for the rankers was that regional rankings could be linked to lucrative summits or conferences at which rankers and leaders in higher education and research gathered to create and sustain networks and to improve and maintain their status.
Disillusionment
Some universities, however, are disillusioned with rankings, particularly those published by commercial rankers such as THE and QS.
In 2020, the leading Indian Institutes of Technology stopped submitting data to the THE rankings, citing a lack of transparency, excessive volatility and reliance on reputation surveys. In 2023, South Korean universities, again citing a lack of transparency in addition to “mathematical flaws”, said they would boycott the QS rankings, although how they proposed to do that is unclear since the company normally replaces missing data with averages or previous submissions.
Meanwhile, in September 2025, Sorbonne University joined Utrecht University, the University of Zurich and Rhodes University in boycotting the THE rankings. The Sorbonne criticised the “black box” methodology, a bias toward English-language research and an excessive reliance on reputation surveys.
A few years ago, there was even a demand for a “boycott” of the Shanghai rankings in protest against the authoritarianism of the Chinese government. Leading American professional schools are less concerned with international rankings, but have campaigned against the US News law and medical school rankings.
China seems to have lost interest in the Western rankings. It has largely ignored the THE University Impact Rankings – only eight universities participated in 2025 – and the THE Interdisciplinary Science Rankings, in which only seven Chinese universities were represented in the top 200, fewer than those of Indonesia, Saudi Arabia and Egypt.
Many Chinese universities have received low scores in the QS Sustainability Rankings, particularly for environmental sustainability, suggesting that they are not making significant efforts. Another sign of disinterest is that the recent Shanghai conference on world-class universities featured only one speaker from Europe and one from North America, a significant contrast to previous years.
Much of this scepticism is directed at global rankings, but there has recently been growing concern about regional rankings. This has been accompanied by initiatives to create locally produced rankings, including the AppliedHE Rankings in Southeast Asia, with all-Asian aspirations, based in Singapore; the Arab Ranking for Universities published by the Association of Arab Universities; and the Engirank rankings of European technological universities, a product of the Perspektywy Education Foundation in Poland.
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