QS Stars Rating: Universities Recognize Benefits

Danny Byrne examines universities' feedback so far on the new QS Stars rating service.

The extent to which academics welcome the annual spate of university rankings is often dependent upon the extent to which their institution is flattered by its position.

But whether for or against, one thing that most people can agree on is that rankings only measure certain key aspects of institutional performance.

“Ranking systems are very important to students when they’re trying to make decisions about where to study, but they’re not always particularly relevant to a student’s specific area of interest”, says Ailsa Lamont, Executive Director (International) at RMIT.

“For example, we recently scored very highly in some of the ERA research rankings (compiled by The Australian, based on the government ERA research rating). That’s fantastic and shows the quality of the institution, but at the same time most of the international students who come to RMIT are coming to do coursework programs, MBAs etc, so having a high quality ranking for research in engineering doesn’t necessarily help them.”

Expanding the scope of assessment

RMIT has become the latest in a succession of Australian institutions to adopt the new QS Stars rating system, which examines universities against a far greater range of criteria than are included in any university ranking.

Universities receive an overall star rating out of five, but also receive ratings against preset thresholds in 30 different measures covering research, employability, teaching, infrastructure, internationalization, knowledge transfer and third mission, as well as rank within a specialist subject.

Lamont says that the system is an expansion of the scope of the rankings that will be mutually beneficial to students and institutions. “QS Stars actually drills down to further detail, which will give students the choice to compare us more usefully with other institutions”, she says.

“We can use it to highlight the many diverse areas of strength that we have, and it will help us with our planning in areas such as branding, positioning, and telling us which areas to focus on.”

Strategic comparison and development

The greater range of the comparative information offered by QS Stars is something that has been welcomed in Australia, where a host of leading universities have moved early to adopt the system.

Another such institution is University of New South Wales, which on 2nd June 2011 received its QS Stars certificate at a rankings seminar at the annual NAFSA conference in Vancouver, making it the first five-star rated Australian university.

“From now on all of our promotional material, our website, and our publications, will include both the QS Stars rating alongside the Australian government’s ERA analysis,” says Jennie Lang, pro-vice chancellor at the university.

Star-rated universities such as UNSW and RMIT are provided with a development roadmap put together by QS Intelligence Unit, which provides an in-depth comparison with a selection of relevant institutions.

Lang says this scope for strategic comparison is a key attraction of the system: “Compared to an international ranking, QS Stars offers more of a framework for benchmarking. It’s something where criteria that are important can be measured over time, not just with our colleagues in Australia but with likeminded universities anywhere in the world, and that’s what really attracted us.”

Highlighting strengths of more universities

Yet for smaller institutions at an earlier stage of their development the system holds a slightly different kind of appeal. Whereas inclusion in the QS World University Rankings is limited to a relatively small number of elite institutions, QS Stars compares an unlimited number of institutions against universal standards.

This was a crucial attraction for Italian institution Cattolica Universita del Sacro Cuore, says Edilio Mazzoleni, Director of Cooperation, Mobility and Internationalization. “You might consider QS Stars to be an evolution of the rankings,” he says.

“What I think that QS Stars can add is to help institutions that do not perform that well in the rankings understand why. QS Stars has given us a better understanding of what are our weaknesses, as well as our strengths within the university.”

Whereas rankings tend to be research-driven, QS Stars has allowed an institution such as Cattolica showcase its credentials in less data-driven areas.

“Cattolica offers excellent services to students. We provide access to a lot of students who may not also be able to afford university, through our scholarship program. Also, among our faculty we have a high percentage of professors who hold a PhD. This sort of information is reflected in QS Stars, whereas it would not be in a university ranking.”

Better informed decision-making

However, Mazzoleni also stresses that for a smaller institution the affect of the system upon internal processes can be just as important as its impact on global branding and visibility.

“The initial reason we decided to adopt QS Stars was to have an instrument in place to check over our data, because we previously had a lot of problems in this regard. One of the problems we have had in the past is miscommunication, so I think with QS Stars we get a better understanding of how to collect information and also make an audience within the university aware of how important it is to provide the right information.”

It is not just at smaller institutions that this sort of internal auditing can have an impact, but also at more internationally established universities such as UNSW.

Lang says: “It’s been wonderful for our internal processes, because we’ve been asked for data that we already had a lot of, as well as other data that we had to put together for the first time. We found that to be really beneficial because we think it’s really important that we implement certain data sets that are associated with our core business. It was a lot of work, but we now have a framework for capturing the data.”

And why is capturing this data important? Lang says that a culture of more informed student decision-making means that independent rating is a key branding tool for any forward thinking and internationally focused institution.

“I think most universities will use QS Stars. Increasingly, discerning students who are much more knowledgeable about their opportunities, say ‘show me the evidence’. I sense that this is what the future is going to be - students wanting us not just to make these assertions, but to back them up.”

• More on the thinking behind the QS Stars system >