As the latest QS world university rankings are released, we look at the big story from this year’s results – the UK slipping down global rankings

When UK citizens go to the polls on Thursday, their thoughts will be dominated by the big issues of the election campaign: Brexit, social care, migration, health provision. Few will have higher education at the forefront of their minds. Jeremy Corbyn’s pledge to abolish tuition fees and reintroduce maintenance grants notwithstanding, discussion of the future of the UK universities has been limited in the run-up to the election.

Wednesday’s launch of the 14th QS World University Rankings provides a timely reminder that whoever triumphs in the election will require all of their political nous to revive the UK’s flagging higher education system.

Last year’s QS results proved dispiriting reading for those concerned about the future of the UK’s universities, and this year’s are no more encouraging: 51 of the UK’s 76 ranked universities fall. The UK is now home to fewer top-400, top-200, and top-100 universities than last year. In the rankings’ uppermost echelon, the University of Cambridge drops to 5th position – its lowest rank since the inaugural QS World University Rankings of 2004.

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Rise and fall

Why does QS’s Intelligence Unit find the UK higher education system, while still objectively the world’s second best, to be decreasing in its competitiveness?

It cannot be put down to Brexit as this represents a second year of UK regression, and we are still in the union. The most consistent decreases in score are found for QS’s citations per faculty indicator. This measure of institutional research impact and intensiveness sees lower relative scores than last year for 57 of the UK’s 76 universities. Put simply, this year’s results indicate that UK universities are becoming less competitive as research-driven institutions.

This could be attributed to years of real-terms funding stagnation. These rankings indicate that the institutions that perform most strongly are those which receive adequate funding – whether public or private. We note, for example, that public research funding in the UK has still not returned to 2010/11 levels in cash terms – let alone in inflation-adjusted real terms.

It is true that injudicious spending can result in inefficient research programmes. However, this ignores the fact that institutions and nations that have seen rankings improvements this year – such as Russia’s Lomonosov Moscow State University, which returns to the top 100 – have benefitted from targeted increases in government investment.



The declines are also the result of the increased use of adjunct staff at UK universities to support expansion. These staff members help to reduce the teaching burden on senior academics, but are able to devote less of their attention to research. They increase the staff count without improving the citations count by a proportional amount.



The international question

The other worry for UK institutions is the level of internationalisation recorded in the first meaningfully post-Brexit edition of the rankings. QS’s raw data shows that the higher education world is becoming a more internationalised one: the global international student ratio (accounting for 5% of each institution’s score) has again increased.

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The UK’s 76 universities do not follow this trend. 2017’s data shows that 56 UK universities have seen their international student ratios drop year-on-year, and the UK average is also below last year’s total. This corroborates evidence from elsewhere. Earlier this year, UCAS noted that EU applications to the UK had dropped by 7%.

But the UK is not alone. The US has also seen its rate of inward student mobility decrease this year. Of its 157 universities, 107 recorded lower relative scores for international student ratio. Furthermore, evidence from business school application figures and US college application statistics suggests that international students are expressing doubts about the desirability of the US as a study destination in greater numbers than before. This suggests there could be a relationship between the drop in international student applications and recent political events.

The Brexit effect

Internationalisation affects the quality of a higher education system in a number of important ways. The first, and most crudely quantitative, is financial. While universities in both the UK and US are navigating a world in which public funding is increasingly scarce, premium tuition rates paid by international students help ensure that these institutions can remain financially competitive.

The second is the impact on research quality. In 1981, approximately 90% of UK citations impact was produced domestically. This figure has decreased to less than half: the majority of UK citations impact is now produced through internationally co-authored papers. The citations impact of a purely domestic paper is minimally better than the global average, but international co-authored papers do substantially better – and the difference is increasing.

Internationalisation is also a valuable means of fostering global relationships and improving national soft power, improving the renown of UK higher education. A sector regarded as insular and parochial will see its proportion of international faculty and students decrease. If the UK government is resolute in ending freedom of movement, access to key funding programs like Horizon 2020 may be threatened, as was the case for Switzerland. These factors, for the reasons outlined above, will adversely affect more substantial metrics like citations per faculty and academic reputation.

Irrespective of political affiliation, navigating the threat that Brexit poses to UK higher education has to be a priority for institutions that want to be tomorrow’s winners.

Jack Moran is closely involved in the auditing and analysis of the QS World University Rankings alongside the QS Intelligence Unit



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