ABSTRACT
The global nature and progressive initiatives hallmarking the evolution of Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) stem from its core mission philosophy, namely, "to enable motivated people around the world to fulfil their potential by fostering international mobility, educational achievement and career development". Within this context, QS World University Rankings was launched to meet a contemporary demand for insight delivered through a structured and transparent process. QS, in turn, has identified four main pillars that contribute to a world-class university. These are research, teaching, employability, and internationalization. Data needed to compile the world university rankings are drawn from three sources: (1) the QS Intelligence Unit data acquisition team, (2) the Scopus database, and (3) QS Academic and Employer Surveys. The data acquisition team is responsible for validating data used for the classification of academic institutions that help users of QS Rankings focus on institutional comparison.
