Measuring academic reputation: THE vs QS

Sept. 29, 2026 | By Billy Wong

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In THE Reputation 2025, Wageningen University & Research lands at 61st. Over in the QS World University Rankings 2026, though, its academic reputation drops to 203rd. Meanwhile, the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) sits comfortably at 28th in QS, yet fails to break into THE's top 150.

Both surveys ask academics essentially the same fundamental question, yet they yield drastically different results.

In my previous article, I unpacked how THE and QS measure research quality, leaving us with an intriguing puzzle: DGIST scored a perfect 100 on Citations per Faculty in QS 2027, outpacing both Oxford and Cambridge, yet landed at joint 385th overall.

Reputation explains most of that gap. When you plug QS's published weights into the 2027 scores, academic and employer reputation make up about two-thirds of the distance between DGIST and Oxford. Citations actually work in DGIST's favour.

In THE, teaching and research reputation together make up 33% of a university's score. In QS, academic reputation alone accounts for 30%. Factoring in employer feedback pushes that total to 45%.

While THE and QS use the same Scopus bibliometric data for citation, reputation is a completely different story. The two conduct their own surveys, survey different audiences, frame similar questions in distinct ways, and process the responses differently.

THE builds its reputation scores on over 69,000 responses collected across two years. QS, by contrast, draws on a five-year window, gathering more than 175,000 academic responses between 2020 and 2024.

Both claim to reflect what the academic community thinks. But just as with citations, the methodology ultimately determines who comes out ahead.

Same question, different electorates

Both rankers rely on unprompted recall: they ask scholars to name the top universities in their field. Both systems essentially measure name recognition.

Recall surveys naturally follow a "winner-takes-all" distribution. Ask people to name a soft drink, and the vast majority say Coca-Cola. The runner-up gets significantly fewer mentions, and the rest fall into a long tail of scattered votes.

Academic reputation follows the exact same pattern. Under THE's system, Harvard achieves a near-perfect 99.8. The 20th-ranked university scores 68.6, the 50th drops to 34.2, and the 100th drops below 19. In QS 2027, 69 institutions score 90 or above for academic reputation, yet three out of five ranked universities (899 out of 1,504) score under 20.

This dynamic heavily impacts every university outside the top 100. Small swings in votes can cause noticeable rank shifts that have little to do with actual quality. To manage this volatility, both rankers transform raw vote counts into normalized scores: THE applies a logarithmic scale to spread out the long tail and compress the top, while QS uses custom adjustments to dampen outlier effects.

When measuring research quality, the primary divide was whether rankers divided citations by papers or staff. For reputation, the key divide is who gets surveyed, and whose opinions carry the most weight.

THE handpicks its respondents exclusively from published scholars, without accepting university nominations. It then weights responses so that each country and academic discipline aligns with its share of global research output.

QS casts a broader net, incorporating contact lists submitted directly by universities. It then heavily privileges international votes over domestic ones, assigning an 85% weight to international responses versus 15% for domestic.

In short, THE asks how a representative sample of global researchers rates an institution, heavily weighting regions that publish the most. QS asks how widely recognized an institution is across international borders—including neighboring countries. Consequently, a prominent regional university can collect a significant share of international votes from its nearby neighbors.

The discrepancies seen with Wageningen and UNAM aren't isolated cases. A comparison of THE's World Reputation Rankings 2025 with QS's 2026 academic reputation scores across the 271 universities featured in both reveals a clear pattern.

Looking across those 271 overlapping universities, Dutch, Swiss, Swedish, and US institutions consistently rank higher in THE. Dutch universities, for instance, average 60 places higher in THE than in QS. Conversely, Japanese, Italian, Spanish, Australian, and Hong Kong institutions perform better in QS, with Japanese universities placing an average of 51 spots higher.

These outcomes stem directly from methodological design choices. THE's emphasis on global research volume favors research-heavy institutions in prolific publishing nations. QS's regional balancing, combined with institutional contact submissions, gives national flagships across Latin America and Asia a much stronger voice.

The rules

1. Who gets a vote

THE operates a strict, invitation-only survey targeting active, published scholars in 13 languages. Universities cannot submit contact lists, and self-nominations are prohibited.

QS gathers input from four distinct streams: past participants, self-registered users, its own database, and institutional contact lists (where each university can submit up to 400 academic contacts). Respondents are barred from voting for their own institution.

QS maintains that contacts submitted by one university are just as likely to vote for competitors. However, critics counter that universities naturally nominate academics familiar with their work. In 2018, QS also confirmed it allows universities to nominate non-academic contacts, while emphasizing that all responses undergo vetting.

Who benefits: In QS, institutions that actively manage their contact submission process gain an edge. In THE, that avenue doesn't exist.

2. What is on the ballot

THE asks respondents to nominate up to 15 top universities for research and 15 for teaching in their specific discipline. These yield two distinct scores: research reputation (18%) and teaching reputation (15%).

QS asks respondents to list up to 10 domestic and 30 international universities leading in research within their field, combining these into a single metric worth 30%.

Who benefits: THE theoretically rewards strong teaching reputations, though in practice, teaching reputation and research reputation tend to be highly correlated. QS's longer international list gives respondents room to recognize strong institutions beyond the most famous global brand names.

3. How are votes weighted

THE reweights responses to mirror the global distribution of scholars. How it calculates this baseline has evolved: it used UNESCO scholar data for the 2024 survey, shifted to global research paper counts for 2025, and hasn't publicly specified the baseline for 2026. If paper volume remains the benchmark, nations with high publication outputs carry greater weight.

QS weights responses based on a scholar's regional and subject familiarity across five major academic fields. Its most influential lever, however, is the 85/15 split favoring international nominations over domestic ones.

Who benefits: THE favors research-intensive universities in high-publishing nations like the Netherlands, Switzerland, and the US. QS elevates regions with lower overall publication volumes, boosting national flagships such as UNAM, PUC Chile, and the University of Malaya.

4. How long a vote counts

THE combines its two most recent annual surveys.

QS combines five years. The latest three count in full, the fourth year at 50% and the fifth at 25%.

Who gains: a university whose standing is rising will see it sooner in THE. An established name whose standing is slipping will hold on longer in QS. The trade-off is stability: THE's shorter window can move more from year to year.

5. How the count is policed

THE caps self-votes at 10% of a university's total count and monitors for voting rings by tracking vote concentration across institutions. Since 2024, it also evaluates the breadth of voting institutions. Logarithmic conversion ensures that early votes carry far more weight than additional votes for established frontrunners.

QS automatically discards self-votes and applies additional proprietary validation checks designed to prevent gaming of the system.

System gaming remains a persistent issue. For example, in 2013, University College Cork's president actively encouraged staff to lobby contacts for QS survey votes, leading QS to tighten its rules against solicitation.

Who benefits: Both systems catch obvious manipulation attempts. THE's rules are more explicit, whereas QS relies on undisclosed internal algorithms.

The limits of asking for names

Despite their differences, both rankings share inherent limitations because they depend on unprompted recall.

1. Fame often outweighs quality. Academics can only nominate institutions they know, meaning exceptional work at lesser-known universities frequently gets overlooked.
2. Rankings create feedback loops. Research by Nicholas Bowman and Michael Bastedo (2011) showed that early ranking publications actively influenced subsequent reputation scores, proving that rankings can shape the very opinions they aim to measure.
3. Age, scale, and language provide structural advantages. Older, larger institutions that publish primarily in English enjoy wider global recognition.
4. Research reputation overshadows everything else. Even THE's dedicated teaching metric is heavily influenced by research prestige, as scholars rarely have direct insight into teaching quality at rival institutions.
5. Reputation changes slowly. Multi-year aggregation means that genuine institutional improvements take time to register, while declining institutions retain their status for years.

Why this matters beyond the rankings

The largest component relies on subjective opinion. Over a third of each ranking rests on survey data. While systematically gathered, subjective prestige cannot be independently verified like publication records or staffing numbers.

Prestige self-perpetuates. Top-tier universities maintain their status partly because respondents expect to see them there. This winner-takes-all dynamic keeps the top of the table remarkably stable, forcing lower-ranked institutions to compete over a tiny fraction of remaining votes.

The methodologies reward contrasting institutional strategies. QS rewards regional visibility and active participant management, whereas THE rewards standing among published scholars in major research systems. A university can easily rise in one ranking while stagnating in the other without any underlying change in operational quality.

Compliance controls are increasingly vital. Restrictions on self-voting, ring detection, and lobbying rules exist because institutions have actively tried to game the system. Aggressive campaigns risk triggering sanctions and public pushback. Institutions should focus on surfacing legitimate existing relationships rather than manufacturing artificial signals, for example, by ensuring co-authors who know their work participate rather than setting up vote-swapping arrangements.

Methodological credibility remains a challenge. Subjective reputation metrics draw intense criticism. When major universities like Utrecht, Zurich, and Sorbonne withdrew from THE, opaque methodologies and "black box" indicators were central to their decisions.

What leaders can do about reputation

In short, THE's survey is harder for universities to directly influence because it strictly controls respondent selection. QS's survey offers greater stability and wider regional representation. Neither directly measures academic quality; both measure visibility and brand awareness.

Here are six strategic steps institutional leaders can take:

1. Quantify your reputation drag. Compare your reputation ranks against your operational metrics. When reputation lags, it is often the single biggest drag on overall performance. In many of our analyses, bridging that gap alone accounted for a 75 to 100 spot jump in QS.
2. Align strategy with survey mechanics. Recognize that QS prioritizes regional visibility and neighboring connections, while THE focuses on research standing in major publishing systems. Ensure governing boards understand these differences.
3. Evaluate trends across realistic time horizons. QS reputation scores aggregate five years of data, while THE uses two. Short-term PR campaigns will not yield immediate results in either system.
4. Optimize QS contact nominations ethically. Submit active research collaborators and frequent co-authors who have genuine insight into your institution's work. Always secure consent beforehand and maintain strict separation between inviting participation and soliciting votes.
5. Avoid vote solicitation. Both organizations actively penalize lobbying efforts, and the reputational fallout far outweighs potential gains.
6. Invest in organic global engagement. Long-term reputation is built on international co-authorship, scholar exchanges, strong doctoral outcomes, and targeted research communications.

When evaluating shifts in your reputation scores, carefully analyze which survey moved and over what timeframe before drawing conclusions.

Our reputation management solution at measuresHE focuses on surfacing authentic research connections. By leveraging co-authorship data, we help universities identify established academic collaborators so that their QS submissions reflect genuine, existing relationships.

At a glance: the two surveys compared

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Tags: Higher Edcuation University Rankings university reputation

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