In September, Sorbonne University, a top research institution in France, became the most recent institution globally to flag concerns about international higher education rankings and announce its withdrawal from the Times Higher Education (THE) World University Rankings.Widely publicised and closely watched, global higher education rankings produced by different organisations, analysts or platforms can determine perceptions among prospective students and employers, and drive policy decisions. The ranking tables have, however, drawn flak over the years. Key concerns among institutions, including a few Indian ones, have been that the rankings are not fully transparent in terms of the data they consider, and that a score and rank do not capture the extent and diversity of activities, contributions, and research in higher education.How do the international rankings work?There are three prominent global higher education rankings. One, the QS rankings, which are produced by global higher education analysts QS Quacquarelli Symonds, headquartered in London. Two, THE rankings, which provide higher education-related data, services, and news, and is headquartered in London. Three, the Shanghai Ranking or the Academic Ranking of World Universities (first published in 2003), which is produced by the Shanghai-based ShanghaiRanking Consultancy. From 2004 to 2009, QS and THE produced their world university rankings together. They now produce separate annual rankings of universities worldwide, in addition to releasing rankings by subject and region.Story continues below this adFor THE, institutions submit data used for the rankings, which allows them to stop participating in the process by withholding these submissions. In contrast, QS uses publicly available data if an institution has not submitted any. The Shanghai Rankings also use publicly available data sources.Here’s how the annual world university rankings are arrived at:QS: Institutions are scored on 10 indicators — academic reputation (highest weightage of 30%), citations per faculty (20%), employer reputation (15%), employment outcomes, faculty-student ratio, international faculty ratio, international research network, international student diversity, international student ratio, and sustainability. For the academic and employer reputation indicators, QS collects data through surveys sent to academics and employers. Institutions can submit up to 400 contacts who can be involved in these surveys. The 2026 edition ranked more than 1,500 institutions, and IIT Delhi had the highest rank (123) among Indian institutions.THE: Uses 17 indicators; indicators on ‘research environment’ and ‘research quality’ together contribute around 59% to the overall score. Research reputation has the highest weightage of 18%, followed by teaching reputation and citation impact (15% each). Other indicators include student-staff ratio, research productivity, research influence, patents, and international students. THE assesses teaching and research reputation through a survey. The 2026 edition ranked more than 2,100 institutions.Story continues below this adShanghai Ranking: Uses six indicators, involving quality of research, faculty, and education. There’s a 20% and 10% weightage for Nobel prize winners and Fields medalists among an institution’s staff and alumni, respectively, besides a 20% weightage for ‘highly cited researchers’ at an institution. It publishes a ranking of 1,000 institutions. The best-ranked Indian institutions in the 2025 edition were IISc and Vellore Institute of Technology — 501-600.What are Sorbonne University’s concerns?The institution — ranked 72 in the 2026 QS ranking, 76 in the 2026 THE rankings, and 43 in the 2025 Shanghai Ranking — flagged concerns about indicators that measure reputation and research.On university rankings in general, Sorbonne University told The Indian Express: “On one hand, their methodology, which focuses on English-language journals, favours certain disciplines, while the humanities and social sciences, whose publication methods and dissemination languages are more varied, are put at a disadvantage. On the other hand, certain rankings are based on reputational surveys, which raise numerous concerns, including scientific, methodological, and ethical issues.”The university referred to the rankings as “black boxes that operate as closed systems: the data on which they are based is not shared, and the methodology is only partially disclosed. As a result, these rankings cannot be reproduced and questioned by the universities concerned, who are therefore unable to fully appropriate them.”Story continues below this ad“With regard to THE rankings specifically, the university feels that the importance given to the reputational survey in the final score is particularly significant, given that the final results and the conditions in which the data is collected are not clearly presented,” it said.The university added that it has appeared in Shanghai, QS, and THE rankings, but “the latter is the only one to offer universities the possibility of requesting to no longer be included in the ranking. This is to its credit.”What concerns have other institutions raised?The older IITs, including IITs Delhi, Kharagpur, Madras, Kanpur, Bombay and Roorkee, had said in 2020 that they would not participate in the THE rankings on account of concerns over transparency. In the 2020 edition of the rankings, no Indian institution made it to the top 300. The highest-ranked Indian institutions were IISc and IIT Ropar (301-350 rank band).Indicating a continued boycott, only five of the 23 IITs featured in the 2026 edition of the rankings released in October – Indore, Ropar, Patna, Gandhinagar, and Mandi. The top-ranked Indian institution is IISc (201-250 rank band).Story continues below this adOn why the IITs withdrew from the THE rankings, Prof V Ramgopal Rao, who was IIT Delhi Director from 2016 to 2021, and is now Group Vice Chancellor, BITS Pilani, said: “There was no clarity, it was mainly a transparency issue on the metrics. The challenges with the rankings are of reputation and perception scores. Those are black boxes. What is the geographical distribution of those who are providing perception scores?”“Another concern is institutional self-citations. What is happening in some universities is that one faculty member writes a paper, and they ask all other faculty members to cite the paper. At the institutional level, they’re increasing their own citation count. For rankings, papers with over 200 authors are also considered, and paper retractions are not accounted for properly,” Prof Rao said, referring to the different global ranking systems as a situation of being “between the devil and the deep sea.”Prof Rao has raised similar concerns about India’s NIRF rankings, like inadequate transparency on perception scores.In 2023, Utrecht University announced that it would not participate in THE rankings, stating that rankings put too much stress on scoring and competition, while the university wants to focus on collaboration and open science. The university also stated that it is impossible to capture the quality of an entire university in one number, and that the makers of the rankings use data and methods that are “highly questionable”.Story continues below this adInstitutions have also raised concerns about the subscription-based tools that rankings use to arrive at a score for research metrics. The ranking systems use data on research publications from databases like Scopus (owned by Elsevier) and Web of Science (owned by Clarivate).In the statement announcing its withdrawal from THE rankings, Sorbonne University pointed to the importance of using open research information and said: “The university has never subscribed to the database Scopus, which is used by THE rankings to assess certain indicators. In addition, Sorbonne University has decided to unsubscribe from the Web of Science, to refocus its attention on free, open, and participative infrastructures like OpenAlex.”Also in Explained | Why Indian science fails to produce Nobel laureatesWith THE rankings focusing on research metrics, an institution must publish at least 1,000 papers in Scopus-indexed journals to qualify for the final ranking.How have THE rankings responded to these concerns?A THE spokesperson told The Indian Express that they respect Sorbonne University’s freedom to withhold institutional data, adding: “We ask that all universities voluntarily submit basic institutional data directly to us each year, to support the collaborative nature of the exercise, and we are delighted that so many do so. But across our 17 balanced and comprehensive performance indicators, the ranking makes use of independent data, including almost 1.5 million votes from over 100,000 academics in our annual reputation survey and an analysis of almost 175 million citations from 18.7 million research publications.”Story continues below this adFor the 2026 rankings, 163 Indian institutions submitted data, and 128 were ranked, making India the second-best represented country in the ranking after the United States.On Indian institutions that have withdrawn from the rankings, Phil Baty, Chief Global Affairs Officer, THE rankings, told The Indian Express: “We are clear that India could – and should – be the best represented nation in the world rankings, if all eligible universities in the nation stepped forward and shared basic institutional data to submit themselves for evaluation. Participation in the rankings process is vital for the global visibility of India’s higher education sector – and key to supporting the excellent internationalisation drive that is supporting India’s national success.”“Unfortunately, not all eligible institutions have been willing to volunteer themselves for the trusted, rigorous process, which is a matter of real regret and a missed opportunity for the nation. We would very much welcome their voluntary participation to help ensure that India has the global recognition that it deserves,” he added.