By Ruth A Pagell*
(22 Sept 2025)
- What changes are Times Higher Education making?
- How does QS describe quality control for its Reputation Rankings?
- What marks the end of an era at U.S. News?
I have been struggling with this article since rankings seem trivial compared to what I read in my national news each morning about changes in the U.S. higher education system and the growing concerns about research integrity. What I read today will have effects on the rankings in the future.
THE and QS still dominate the rankings’ literature, followed by U.S. News Best Global Universities Rankings, and Shanghai Ranking Consultancy’s Academic Ranking of World Universities. This article will cover THE’s Impact rankings today and changes for the future, with a brief review of QS’ 2026 most recent rankings, and news from U.S News Global.
TIMES HIGHER EDUCATION
Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) using THE’s Impact Rankings have been an important theme in Ruth’s Rankings, from the initial SDG article in 2019 (RR 38). Participation has grown from 467 institutions in seventy countries to 2,526 institutions in 130 countries. 2,318 universities received an overall impact ranking. 201 universities participated but did not meet the criteria to submit at least three SDGS plus Partnerships for the goals (SDG 17). These universities cannot be Identified although they appear under the SDGs they submitted. Feeling as if I were asking for secret information, THE’s Impact team finally provided me with the list. See the example below.
| EXAMPLE 1 The Technical University of Munich is listed in four SDGS: Tied for number one in SDG 9 Industry Innovation and Infrastructure; Also ranked in SDG 3(Health), 7(Energy), and 11(cities). It did not participate in SDG 17; name does not appear in overall ranking
EXAMPLE 2: Senegal is highlighted as one of the new countries in the 2025 rankings. Without having the list of universities that do not have overall scores, I would not have discovered the name of the Senegal institution, the Dakar Institute of Technology. After several searches, I found it in THE’s World Rankings, listed in Impact Rankings, SDG Energy. |
I did not analyze the 2025 Impact rankings. Read Angel Calderon’s in-depth analysis of the 2024 THE Impact rankings and his overview analysis of the 2025 rankings (Calderon, 2024, 2025). The 2025 Impact rankings will not be comparable to the 2026 Impact rankings. More important than the results of the 2025 Impact Rankings are the changes to the 2026 rankings and changes to THE’s rankings portfolio announced in June 2025 (Baty, 2025a). I listened to a webinar introducing the changes, which resulted in more questions than answers. I usually ignore THE’s description of its success. I have to agree that the Impact Rankings have become a “resounding success” based on its growth from over 467 universities in 2019 to over 2,526 in 2025.
By 2022, the Impact Rankings covered more countries than THE’s World Rankings. In 2022, the World Rankings created a category called reporters for universities that did not meet all the criteria for a world rank. I unscientifically checked a list of 25 reporters and fourteen appear in the Impact rankings.
The 2026 release will be called ratings rather than rankings. Baty (2025b) describes the changes for 2026:
- Creation of a sustainability network, which will have ongoing costs.
- Changing from rankings to ratings
- Requirement of paying to participate
Even after introducing AI for the evaluation of universities’ submissions, the work has been overwhelming. The ranking will be relaunched as Times Higher Education Sustainability Impact Ratings, and Sustainability Impact Network, using AI as the first line of quality control. The vision is for a network of universities who will pay for their membership. Cost for a university will be based on the country’s World Bank status.
- High and upper-middle-income nations, greater than £3,500 per year.
- Lower-middle income nations, greater than £1,000 per year.
- Low income nations: Free of charge.
NOTE: 28 universities in the 2025 rankings are in low income countries.
Sustainability Networks:
One example of an existing sustainability network is The United Nations Sustainable Development Solution Network (https://www.unsdsn.org/about/) with 2,000 member institutions, and 58 national and regional networks whose members are mostly universities. Another example is the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE) which currently includes 390 institutions, with ratings from platinum to reporter. North American universities that do not participate in THE’s Impact Rankings, participate In AASHE. AASHE includes the supporting documents.
I usually turn to University World News for articles on the latest hot topics. However, Linkedin became the home for an interesting interaction on the future changes to THE’s Impact Rankings that began with questions asked of THE’s former Chief Data Officer, Duncan Ross. Ross was not involved in the changes. The change receiving the most comments was having institutions pay to participate. I questioned the fairness of a university from a Lower-middle income country such as Cambodia paying the same amount as another Lower-middle income country, India, which has a well-established research infrastructure. Also several of the Lower-middle income countries just moved up from Lower income. Ross added that there are also income inequalities among universities in high income countries such as the United Kingdom. The discussion led to other concerns such as the inaccessibility of the actual data and the costs to individual universities for collecting the data. Universities already paying consulting fees to THE will not have to pay again.
Ross raised the question “Is it better to have many institutions doing some work on sustainability, or a smaller number doing deeper work? You could make a good argument either way.”
THE Changes in its Portfolio
TABLE 1: Changes In THE’s portfolio
| DISCONTINUED RANKINGS | CONTINUED RANKINGS |
| Stand-alone Reputation ranking | Reputation makes up 18% of World Rankings Research Environment pillar and 15% of its Education pillar. |
| Regions: Sub-Saharan Africa | Asia, Arab, Latin America |
| Young university rankings | Impact rankings |
| Online rankings – never formally released | Interdisciplinary rankings |
Baty, P. 2025b
I recommend reading Baty’s article (2025a) on the new framework and Melatti’s article on the rationale for using AI to verify the thousands of data points associated with the rankings for more details.
THE’s 2026 World Rankings are due for release on October 9, 2025. Ruth’s Rankings will do an overview and include results from the 2025 Academic Rankings of World Universities and how they differentiate between the Chinese and western universities in the different rankings indicators.
QS SUSTAINABILITY and REPUTATION RANKINGS
I took a quick look at the QS 2026 World Rankings released in June 2025. The 2026 and 2025 World Rankings included 1503 institutions. 18 of 2025’s top 20 are 2026’s top 20. In 2026, six are from the U.S., four from the U.K., two each from Australia, China, and Singapore, and one from Hong Kong and Switzerland. QS makes up for its relatively limited number of ranked world universities with expanded regional rankings using similar metrics (RR 58). For example, the 2026 World Rankings has 563 universities from Asia and the current Asian University Rankings includes 987. The latter will be updated in November.
I revisited QS’s Sustainability Rankings and Reputation indicators. RR 53 introduced QS’ Sustainability rankings. QS selects universities using third party data. The article included an in-depth description of the Indicators (QS Lens) using Environmental Impact and Social Impact. The 2025 Sustainability Rankings were published in December 2024, and included a third Lens, Governance. Universities overall scores from the 2025 Sustainability rankings are included in the 2026 World Rankings. 2026 Sustainability rankings are scheduled for release in November, 2025.
QS’ Research and Employer Reputation Rankings account for 45 percent of a university’s overall rank. Having heard complaints about the reputation rankings, I listened to a webinar describing next year’s rankings. The webinar talked about the reputation survey methodology used by QS, which differs from other approaches that use curated lists. Not being able to attend the live webinar, I contacted QS, asking them to explain their quality control. They use a mix of curated lists and responses from universities. They do have a method for screening out “bad actors”. THE uses invitation only participation. Clarivate shares its methodology for its Global Institutional profiles project with other companies who use reputation data in their rankings. (https://clarivate.com/academia-government/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/dlm_uploads/2024/06/Academic-reputation-survey-GIPP.pdf).
IMPACT, CONCLUDING THOUGHTS
The top universities are the same in THE’s and QS’ rankings. If a university is not listed in these rankings it does not mean that it is not active in sustainability initiatives. In 2023, Barbie Keiser and I authored an article on SDGs that includes references to other lists of universities involved with SDGs (Keiser).
Ross mentioned in the Linkedin discussion that he liked the idea of THE and QS diverging. THE has been open to a broader coverage of countries in both world and impact rankings and QS continues to cater to the usual suspects. When it comes to Impact or Sustainability rankings, I see the different approaches as complementary.
See Table in Appendix below.
US NEWS BEST GLOBAL UNIVERSITIES – The end of an era
US News and World Report began ranking U.S. universities by their reputation in 1983 as determined by university presidents. In 1988, Robert Morse took charge of the U.S. News rankings, changing focus in the U.S. rankings over time from inputs to outputs. On July 1, 2025 Morse stepped down. He turned the ranking over to Eric Brooks and Kennet Hines, who have been working with the rankings for over a decade. The Global Rankings, introduced in 2015, places a higher emphasis on research than U.S. News’ rankings of U.S. universities. (Diep). It will be interesting to see if there will be changes in the future. Ruth’s Rankings does not do regular analysis of the rankings since only the current year’s ranking is available. Data are provided for individual performance indicators and subjects, several of which are related to SDG topics. I have made a note on my 2026 calendar for July to check the U.S. News rankings in more detail to see if the new editors made noticeable changes from Morse’s approach.
ENDING ON A POSITIVE NOTE
With all of the negative articles in the rankings literature, I recently read about a positive initiative in a Linkedin post. It announced that QS’ Director of Analytics and Evaluation, Leigh Kamolins, had been appointed as a co-chair for the United Nations Action Group on Higher Education (HESI) that includes an initiative on Rankings, Ratings and Assessment. Other members include Times Higher Education, QS, Elsevier, and Cabells. I was surprised that the participating institutions do not do more to publicize their involvement. It demonstrates that the organizations involved in rankings and bibliometrics are connected to the world-wide higher education network https://sdgs.un.org/HESI/rankings-ratings-and-assessment.
RESOURCES
Ruth’s Rankings has followed SDGs from the first article in January 2019 annually until today. QS’ has a webinar scheduled in November 2025 for its 2026 Sustainability rankings.
AASHE (2025) STARS, Sustainability Tracking, Assessment & Rating System https://reports.aashe.org/institutions/participants-and-reports/
Baty, P. (10 Jun 2025a). Same insights, less noise: why we’re simplifying our World University Rankings
Baty (19 June 2025b) Sustainability Impact Ratings: a new framework and network for universities
Calderon, A. ( 25 Jun 2025). Beyond the Anglosphere: Asia continues to rise in the rankings. University World News. https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20250625102849875
Calderon, A. (24 Jun 2024). ‘THE’ Impact Rankings: Here are some possible enhancements https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20240624164738679
Diep, F. (20 Jun 2025). ‘U.S. News’ Rankings Guru, Soon to Retire, Reflects on the Role He’s Played in Higher Ed. Chronicle of Higher Education. https://www.chronicle.com/article/u-s-news-rankings-guru-soon-to-retire-reflects-on-the-role-hes-played-in-higher-ed
Keiser, B. & Pagell, R. (2022). SDGs and the scholarly community, in Bayer K. ed. Library and Book Trade Almanac, 67th ed. Information Today, Inc. Pgs. 23 – 47 reprinted April 2023 in Ruth’s Rankings, https://librarylearningspace.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/LBTA2022_SDGs-and-the-Scholarly-Community.pdf
Melatti, V. (5 June 2025). AI is improving our rankings, but human expertise will remain vital. https://www.timeshighereducation.com/world-university-rankings-news/ai-improving-our-rankings-human-expertise-will-remain-vital.
Ruwoko, E. (25 Jul 2025). Unlocking tomorrow’s scientific solutions today for SDGS. University World News . https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20250725105859817
The July twenty fifth 2025 edition of University World News features articles on SDGs, with the lead article by Eve Ruwoko
APPENDIX 66:
Appendix 66 has two small tables. Table 2 lists the top ten universities in the THE and QS sustainability rankings in the world and in Asia. Table 3 shows the differences between the number of countries in the THE World Rankings and Impact rankings.
It will be interesting to see the impact of charging for membership in the Sustainability Network will have on the distribution of countries .
Ruth’s Rankings
A list of Ruth’s Rankings and News Updates is here.
GUIDELINES ON USING RANKINGS – Users of rankings have a responsibility to understand the rankings they are using:
CWTS Leiden Responsible Use https://www.leidenranking.com/information/responsibleuse
IREG Observatory on Academic Rankings and Excellence (2023) https://ireg-observatory.org/en/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/IREG-guidelines2023.pdf
*Ruth A. Pagell is emeritus faculty librarian at Emory University. After working at Emory, she was the founding librarian of the Li Ka Shing Library at Singapore Management University and then adjunct faculty [teaching] in the Library and Information Science Program at the University of Hawaii. She has written and spoken extensively on various aspects of librarianship, including contributing articles to ACCESS – https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3238-9674
