QS vs FT: 2 rankings, which one to trust?

QS vs FT: 2 rankings, which one to trust?

In 2018, Aarav Mehta stood in his tiny room in Pune, India, staring at two browser tabs. One showed the QS World University Rankings, where a University in Australia sat confidently in the top 40. The other was the Financial Times MBA Ranking, where that University didn’t even feature in the top 50 business schools. Aarav wanted a global education, a pathway to migration, a shot at consulting. But two “world-class” lists gave him two radically different stories.

He trusted QS. Big mistake.

Two years and $120,000 later, Aarav found himself underemployed in Australia, shut out of consulting, with a university name that opened a few doors. His MBA had academic rigor, sure. But no career pipeline, no real brand among employers. It looked good on the QS list, but the QS list hadn’t looked very hard.

This essay is about the illusion of trust that university rankings create, and how QS and FT tell different, often conflicting, stories about the same schools. If you’re a student, parent, policymaker, or educator, and you’re using rankings to make decisions, you need to know what’s behind the curtain.

See more: Top 10 QS Ranked Colleges Without GMAT/GRE | Al-Connect Reviews | Top MiM Programs Without GMAT

The Rankings Everyone Trusts, But No One Understands

University rankings project authority. They use graphs, tables, percentages, and long lists to convince us they are objective. But they are not. Each one is built on a set of assumptions, weighted values, and quiet incentives.

Among the many ranking systems (THE, ARWU, US News), the QS World University Rankings and the Financial Times Business School Rankings stand out, one for its broad global reach, the other for its influence in business education.

QS ranks over 1,500 institutions globally across disciplines. It’s often the first list you see when you Google “best universities in the world.”

FT, by contrast, focuses entirely on business education, MBAs, Executive MBAs, and Master’s in Management. It ranks around 100 schools per category, and only those that meet strict data-reporting standards.

But here’s the trap: most people think they’re comparing apples to apples when they’re not even in the same orchard.

QS: Reputation Over Results

The core of the QS methodology rests on one pillar: reputation.

• 40% of the score comes from “academic reputation,” based on global surveys of faculty.
• 10% comes from “employer reputation,” based on surveys of hiring managers.
• The rest includes faculty/student ratio (20%), citations per faculty (20%), and a sprinkle of diversity metrics.

This sounds comprehensive until you interrogate it.

Let’s start with academic reputation. How exactly is this measured? Through a survey that asks academics to list the best institutions in their field. But academia is a world of inertia. Name recognition often outweighs actual teaching or research quality. If you’ve published a few papers, you probably list Oxford, Harvard, and Stanford. Not because you’ve studied there, but because they dominate the intellectual skyline.

This means QS measures perception and not your performance. The rich get richer. The famous stay famous. The universities that invest in branding, international outreach, and strategic survey response campaigns get rewarded.

There is no verification that what is being measured corresponds to student experience, career outcomes, or industry relevance. In fact, many institutions treat QS rankings as a marketing opportunity more than a reflection of truth. Rankings consultants, data manipulation, cherry-picked data submissions, these are all part of the game. QS has become an ecosystem, one that feeds off the very universities it claims to objectively assess.

FT: Imperfect, But Grounded

Now let’s look at the Financial Times.

Their methodology isn’t perfect either, but it’s measurably closer to student reality. FT gathers data from alumni three years after graduation. Metrics include:

• Average salary and salary increase
• Career progress index
• International mobility
• Value for money
• Female faculty/student representation
• Carbon footprint and ESG content in curriculum

These aren’t subjective impressions. These are measurable effects of education. While the FT’s approach does have limitations, it excludes schools that don’t meet certain reporting thresholds, and it over-prioritises salary, it at least reflects what actually happens after graduation.

Put simply: FT measures transformation. QS measures reputation. If you’re a 26-year-old investing two years and six figures in an MBA, which would you rather trust?

The Quiet Commercialisation of QS

Here’s what most students don’t know: QS is a business. It sells data products, consulting services, promotional packages, and events to the same universities it ranks. It runs global summits. It offers customised rankings. Institutions pay to sponsor QS conferences and showcase their “ranked” status.

Is this inherently corrupt? No. But it creates a built-in conflict of interest. Moreover, QS rankings rarely change dramatically year to year, unless methodology changes or institutions rise dramatically in media presence. That’s not because the world’s universities are that stable, it’s because QS is deeply invested in continuity, which protects its brand and rewards already-ranked institutions.

In contrast, the FT’s rankings do shift. Programs rise and fall. Schools that innovate, for example, by integrating ESG topics, improving career support, or lowering tuition costs, are rewarded. This reflects a real-time feedback loop between education and the world it claims to prepare students for.

What’s the Price of Trusting the Wrong Rankings?

Let’s go back to Aarav.

He picked a university in Australia because it was “top 40” in QS. His assumption, and it’s not his fault, was that this ranking meant a world-class MBA. But QS wasn’t ranking the MBA. It was ranking the university as a whole, including physics, literature, and agriculture.

Now, the university is an excellent research university. But its MBA program was not ranked by FT. And in Australia, only a handful of programs hold clout in consulting pipelines.

The cost of misunderstanding rankings is not academic. It’s personal. It’s financial. It’s a career detour.

And he’s not alone. Every year, thousands of students, especially from emerging economies, spend family savings, take out massive loans, and make life decisions based on lists they don’t really understand. This isn’t just bad judgment. It’s a systemic failure of transparency.

So, Which Should You Trust?

If you’re looking for a global reputation measure, for example, to understand which institutions carry brand prestige in the research world, QS might be useful. But only if you understand its bias toward older, richer, English-speaking institutions. 

If you’re considering a business education, and especially if ROI, salary growth, and career mobility matter, the FT should be your default.

But the deeper point is this: stop outsourcing your judgment. Rankings are not GPS systems. They’re more like tourist maps, useful for direction, dangerous if blindly followed. They serve institutional interests first, student interests second. They simplify complex educational ecosystems into single-number hierarchies.

What Students Really Need

Here’s what no ranking gives you:

• How much real industry engagement exists in a program?
• How competent, engaging, and present are the professors?
• Will you build a network that matters in your field?
• Does the curriculum match the future of work?
• How many graduates are doing what you want to do?

To answer these, you have to go beyond QS and FT. Talk to alumni. Read employment reports. Ask the hard questions. Compare the ranking with what you value: affordability, location, industry ties, cultural fit, migration goals. Trust your judgment more than a list.

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