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Figure 5.1 shows how Queen’s has performed in the QS, (Times Higher Education) THE, and Shanghai world university rankings systems over the last decade. These values demonstrate that Queen’s is generally ranked somewhere between 200 and 300 in different world university rankings.

Becoming consistently ranked in the top 200 or better would enhance Queen’s global reputation, which would aid in recruiting students and faculty, and provide access to international programs that are limited by institutional rank.

The following sections consider the QS rankings in depth because we have access to data required to conduct such an analysis.

Student-Faculty Ratio

The QS score in the student-faculty ratio category is plotted against this ratio in Figure 5.2 for all U15 institutions, with Queen’s indicated by the red symbol. 

The data show that Queen’s has the third highest student-faculty ratio across U15 schools. Assuming there is no intention to reduce the size of the student body, improving this ratio, and hence the QS score in this section, would require increasing faculty numbers at a higher rate than the growth in student numbers. 

For context regarding the necessary changes in faculty numbers, the data indicate that if student numbers did not increase at Queen’s, the institution would have to hire approximately 100 new faculty to achieve the same student-faculty ratio as the U15 institution with the next highest value for this ratio. Doing this would translate into an improvement of 0.1 points in the total QS score, which would improve Queen’s position in the QS rankings by 1.

International Faculty Ratio

The QS score in the international faculty ratio category is plotted against this rate in Figure 5.4 for all U15 institutions, with Queen’s indicated by the red symbol. 

The data indicate that Queen’s has the second-lowest value for this ratio across the U15. For context with respect to improving this score, if Queen’s increased this ratio (0.27) to that of the U15 institution with the next highest ratio (0.29), it would increase its overall QS score by 0.3 points, which translates into an improvement of 2 positions in the QS rank. 

Achieving this increase in the international faculty ratio would require increasing the number of international faculty by about 30 members while keeping the total faculty number constant.

International Research Network

The QS international research network index is a measure of the richness of an institution’s international partners and is underpinned by a metric calculated as S = L/ln(P), where S is the QS score, P is the distinct number of international partners included on publications, and L is the number of countries represented by those partners. For each institution, the value of S is calculated separately for each of the five academic areas considered in QS system using field-weighting factors, and the institutional index is obtained by averaging the individual scores for these five areas. 

The QS scores for the international research network are plotted against the value of this metric in Figure 5.7 for all U15 institutions, with Queen’s indicated by the red symbols. The data indicate that Queen’s is ranked last in this category amongst U15 institutions, but it should be noted that all U15 institutions exhibit high scores (above 70 out of a maximum of 100) and thus generally perform well in this category.

The use of field-weighted quantities in the calculation of the international research network index permits a comparison of how different fields contribute to this index. The Queen’s and median U15 values of this metric in each of the academic fields included in the QS calculation are presented in Figure 5.8. 

The data show that Queen’s reaches 99%, 93%, 86%, 82%, and 51% of the U15 median values for the engineering, health, science, social science, and arts and humanities fields, respectively. These results indicate that a change in faculty distribution could improve this score. Once again, consider the case where the faculty were distributed according to the U15 median values in Figure 2.1. 

If this situation was achieved, once again assuming all faculty added or removed from areas contributed the average amount to this index in those areas, Queen’s would improve its total QS score by 0.9 points, which translates into an improvement of 8 positions in the QS rank.