In News:

• The Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru, is the fastest rising South Asian university among the coveted QS World University Rankings top 200 varsities.

What’s in today’s article:

• About QS Rankings (Purpose, Parameters, etc.)
• QS Rankings 2023 (Major Highlights) 

In Focus: QS World University Rankings

• Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) is a London-based global higher education analyst.
• QS World University Rankings is an annual publication of university rankings.

Purpose

• The rankings compare universities in four major areas: Research, Teaching, Employability, and International outlook.
• Each of these areas are measured against six performance indicators:
  • Academic Reputation (40%):
    • Based on an academic survey, it collates the expert opinions of more than 94,000 experts regarding teaching and research quality.
  • Faculty/Student Ratio (20%):
    • The number of academic staff employed relative to the number of students enrolled.
  • Citations per faculty (20%):
    • The total number of citations received by all papers produced by an institution across a five-year period by the number of faculty members at that institution.
  • Employer Reputation (10%):
    • Based on an employer survey, which collates responses from employers about which institutions they source the most competent, innovative, effective graduates from.
  • International faculty/student ratio (5% each):
    • A measure of an institution’s success in attracting faculty and students from overseas. 

QS World University Rankings 2023:

• Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) recently published the 19^th edition of the world's most consulted international university ranking.
• This year's QS World University Rankings is the largest ever, with 1,418 institutions across one hundred locations.
• IISc-Bengaluru is now the ‘fastest rising’ South Asian University, inching closer to the global top 150, having attained 155^th rank in this year’s rankings.
  • It remains the world’s top research university, ahead of Harvard, Princeton and MIT.
• IITs in Guwahati (37^th) and Roorkee (47^th) and new entrant University of Madras (48^th) also made it to the elite list of global top 50 research institutions.
• Globally, the top five – MIT, Cambridge, Stanford, Oxford and Harvard (in order) – from last year remain unchanged.