QS does not include data from international campuses in the evaluation of institutions. For example, if a British university has a campus in Malaysia, this campus does not contribute to the analysis for the parent institution. Note that this does not affect autonomous institutions that happen to share a name or history, but that are governed by an independent leadership team.
International Campuses have become more common over the past few years. Previously, QS did not consider these campuses in the evaluation of the parent campus. After extended consultation with stakeholders, including our Advisory Board, QS has revised its policy on this to provide two pathways: autonomous, and non-autonomous.
We use the following guidelines in arriving at a decision on whether a campus of an institution can be considered separately for rankings purposes.
- Does the branch campus have its own university principal (president, chancellor or vice-chancellor depending on the local custom) that does NOT report into the leadership of the main campus? This is a strong indicator of distinct autonomous governance.
- Does the campus have a distinct name/brand/identity/domain? e.g. ucla.edu; berkeley.edu – these sites look and feel very distinct from one another giving each a distinct identity.
- Do researchers from each branch campus publish under discernibly different affiliation identifiers that can be isolated reliably in Scopus, with no common parent identifier of another Higher Education Institution (exception is university systems which we still consider by component)?
- Does the university print a distinct name on different campus degree certificates?
If the answer is NO to ANY of these questions, then we will not treat the campuses as an autonomous entity. When a campus has been determined to be autonomous, we will evaluate and analyze it as a separate university, completely in-line with the process for any other university in the ranking. It will have no effect on the parent institution.
Where a campus is determined to be non-autonomous, its data of this institution does not contribute to the evaluation of the parent institution.