Faculty Student Ratio is a major indicator in many of the QS Rankings. This indicator aims to act as a proxy for the learning and teaching environment of the institution. The more academic staff resource made available to students, such as teaching, supervision, curriculum development, and pastoral support, the better this experience ought to be. It is calculated by dividing the number of students validated by QS by the Faculty figure validated by QS. It aims to serve as a proxy measure for the learning and teaching environment of the institution.
Datasets
For the calculation of this indicator, QS gathers two distinct datasets:
Full-Time Equivalent (FTE) students
QS requests an array of data pertaining to students, much of which supports university profiles on this website, much of which may be used in the future to enrich the rankings metrics, but at present, the total student numbers are first drawn from the addition of separate undergraduate and postgraduate numbers supplied to us. Where this data is unavailable or incomplete, total student numbers are used.
Full-Time Equivalent (FTE) faculty
Faculty numbers used are totals. Whilst it would be ideal to separate the notions of teaching and research and use the former for calculating this indicator and the latter for the Citations per Faculty indicator, it has not been possible to do so as data to that degree of distinction has so far proved unavailable for many countries in the study.
Data Sources
Student Faculty Ratio is a commonly used measure in many evaluations and rankings around the world. In the UK, for example, the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA), compiles the results of a very detailed Student-Faculty Ratio, but the underlying data is more sophisticated than that available in many other countries.
QS sources data not only directly from institutions themselves but also from government ministries, agencies such as HESA, web sources, and other third parties. Where possible our data are checked against multiple sources to verify their authenticity.