THE REPUTATION RACE: Who Is Really Voting for Your University?
Feb. 27, 2026 | By David Watkins
In the fierce competition for global university prestige, the most powerful metric is also the most debated: Academic Reputation. Both QS and THE weigh the opinions of global scholars heavily in their final scores, but how they gather those opinions is a study in contrasts. To understand the true value of an institution's reputation, you have to look at who controls the ballot box. One ranking relies on a strictly independent, proprietary vault of active academics. The other? It effectively lets the universities choose their own electorate.
The QS Approach – A CRM Exercise in Disguise?
If you want to know how well-regarded a university is, who do you ask? In the case of Quacquarelli Symonds (QS), you effectively ask the university itself.
Every ranking cycle, QS opens a portal where universities are invited to submit lists of up to 400 academic contacts (and 400 employer contacts). Once submitted, QS emails the reputation survey directly to these individuals.
In the highly competitive world of higher education, this process has morphed into a strategic marketing operation. Universities don’t just submit random names. Ranking committees and dedicated "Reputation Champions" meticulously curate these lists, tapping their own faculty to nominate peers from other institutions with whom they co-author papers, share grants, or run exchange programs.
The Echo Chamber Effect: The flaw in this design is obvious: the electorate is inherently "friendly." Universities are supplying the contact details of academics who already know them, like them, and are primed to vote for them.
It effectively turns the academic reputation metric into a measure of an institution's Customer Relationship Management (CRM) capabilities. If a university has the administrative muscle to harvest 400 loyal contacts and mobilize its network, its reputation score will artificially inflate. Critics and researchers have repeatedly warned of 'reciprocal voting'—a tacit quid-pro-quo where universities leverage their international partner networks to ensure they are voting for each other.
The THE Approach – The Proprietary Vault
If QS leaves the front door open for universities to invite their friends, Times Higher Education (THE) has built a fortress.
Unlike QS, THE entirely bypasses university administration. Institutions cannot nominate voters, submit contact lists, or mobilize their collaborators. Instead, THE relies on its own proprietary database of academics to source its survey pool.
The Blind Electorate: To even receive an invitation to vote in the THE Academic Reputation Survey, an academic must meet strict, independent criteria. Because THE pulls from its own vault of active scholars, a respondent generally must be actively publishing in credible, peer-reviewed journals within the last five years, have been cited by their peers, and possess a discoverable institutional footprint.
THE’s data teams curate the data to ensure a statistically representative sample of global higher education, balancing out regional and disciplinary biases. The survey is strictly invite-only.
Because the electorate is chosen independently, universities are completely in the dark. They have no idea which of their global peers are receiving the THE survey, making it very difficult to lobby them or stack the deck. The academic simply receives an email out of the blue, asking them to name the best universities in their specific field.
Of course, the validity of the reputation survey result depends on the database of scholars itself being up to date, representative, and correct.
The Verdict: Which is More Gameable?
QS measures how well a university can organize its professional network to vote for it. It rewards administrative hustle and targeted marketing. THE, on the other hand, measures what a randomly selected, statistically weighted pool of active, published scholars naturally thinks of an institution without prompting.
By relying on its proprietary database and shutting universities out of the contact-sourcing process, THE maintains a robust wall of independence. While no ranking system is perfect, THE’s methodology ensures that a university's reputation is earned in the journals and lecture halls—not in the marketing department.
Tags: Higher Education QS Rankings Times Higher Education University World University Rankings academic reputation reputation university reputation