• "To what extent is an institution or programme recognised by employers as a source of high-quality, well-prepared and employable graduates?"

Employer Reputation addresses the extent to which institutions and programmes are valued by employers involved in graduate recruitment. By capturing employer preferences and perceptions, the indicator provides an externally validated measure of how successfully an institution is regarded in the labour market and how strongly its graduates are associated with the skills, knowledge and attributes sought by employers.

Students

• "Which institutions and programmes are most respected by employers when recruiting graduates?"

For students, this indicator provides insight into how institutions are perceived by those making hiring decisions. It helps prospective students identify institutions whose graduates are recognised and valued by employers, supporting informed study choices aligned with future career ambitions.

Institutions

• "How is our institution or programme perceived by employers relative to peers?"

For institutions, Employer Reputation provides an independent benchmark of employer recognition and esteem. It enables institutions to understand how they are positioned within the graduate employment market and how effectively their educational provision is perceived to prepare graduates for professional careers.

Employers

• "Which institutions and programmes consistently produce graduates that employers prefer to recruit?"

For employers, the indicator reflects the collective judgement of graduate recruiters regarding institutions that deliver graduates with relevant skills, capabilities and workplace readiness. It highlights institutions that have established strong reputations among hiring organisations.

Policymakers

• "Which institutions are recognised by employers for contributing effectively to workforce and skills development?"

For policymakers, Employer Reputation provides evidence of the alignment between higher education provision and labour market needs. It offers insight into which institutions are viewed by employers as producing graduates who contribute effectively to economic and societal needs.

Students

For most students, higher education is closely linked to future employment opportunities. Employer Reputation provides a unique perspective on institutional performance by reflecting the views of individuals directly involved in hiring graduates. It helps students understand which institutions and programmes are most recognised and valued by employers, complementing information on teaching, research and student experience.

Students can use this indicator to identify institutions that have established strong standing within the labour market and to assess whether a particular institution is likely to support their career ambitions. As the measure is based on feedback from employers across different countries, regions and sectors, it also provides insight into the broader employability reputation of an institution beyond local or national contexts.

Institutions

For institutions, Employer Reputation offers an independent assessment of how their graduates and programmes are perceived by employers. It provides valuable feedback on the extent to which educational provision is producing graduates who are recognised as capable, prepared and relevant to workforce needs.

Institutions can use the indicator to benchmark their standing against competitors, monitor changes in employer perception over time, and identify opportunities to strengthen engagement with employers and industry. Strong performance may also provide evidence that curriculum design, student support and employability initiatives are effectively aligned with labour market expectations.

Employers

Employer Reputation is important for employers because it aggregates the collective judgement of hiring professionals regarding the institutions and programmes that consistently produce desirable graduates. The indicator reflects patterns of trust and confidence developed through graduate recruitment experiences across industries and regions.

Employers can use the measure as a reference point when evaluating recruitment pipelines, identifying institutions with strong talent pools, and understanding how peers within the recruitment community perceive different institutions and programmes. The indicator also reinforces the importance of employer engagement in shaping and recognising high-quality higher education provision.

Policymakers

For policymakers, Employer Reputation provides insight into the relationship between higher education and labour market needs. It offers evidence of which institutions are perceived by employers as successfully preparing graduates for employment and supporting workforce development priorities.

The indicator can be used to understand patterns of employer recognition across institutions, disciplines and regions, helping inform discussions around skills development, graduate employability and economic competitiveness. It also provides an external perspective that complements outcome-based and institutional performance measures used in higher education policy analysis.

Global Higher Education Landscape

Within the global higher education landscape, Employer Reputation contributes an important external measure of institutional performance based on labour market perceptions. It captures employer views from across countries, regions and industry sectors, providing a comparative assessment of how institutions and programmes are recognised internationally.

The indicator helps reveal how higher education institutions create value beyond academia through the development of graduates who are sought after by employers. By incorporating the perspectives of graduate recruiters, it broadens understanding of institutional quality and impact, complementing measures of teaching, research and internationalisation and contributing to a more comprehensive picture of global higher education performance.

Scope

The indicator covers higher education institutions, faculties, subjects, business schools and programmes that are eligible for inclusion in QS rankings and receive valid nominations through the QS Global Employer Survey.

The metric captures employer perceptions of institutions and programmes based on the views of individuals involved in graduate recruitment and hiring decisions. Responses are collected from employers across a broad range of countries, regions, organisation types and industry sectors. Survey data are accumulated over a five-year period, with historical responses weighted to ensure that results reflect both consistency and recency of employer opinion.

For subject rankings and graduate management education rankings, additional subject-specific and programme-specific methodologies are applied to ensure that the indicator reflects employer perceptions relevant to the discipline or programme being assessed.

Inclusion / Exclusion Rules

Included

• Institutions, faculties, subjects, business schools and programmes that are eligible for inclusion within the relevant QS ranking methodology.
• Valid employer nominations submitted through the QS Global Employer Survey.
• Responses from individuals involved in graduate recruitment or hiring decisions within public-sector, private-sector or other eligible employing organisations.
• Employer survey responses collected during the five-year survey window used for the relevant ranking cycle.
• Subject-specific and programme-specific nominations where applicable to the ranking methodology.

Excluded

• Responses that fail QS data validation, quality assurance or data-cleaning procedures.
• Incomplete, duplicate, fraudulent or otherwise unusable survey submissions.
• Nominations from individuals affiliated with higher education institutions or research institutes where such respondents are not eligible under the survey methodology.
• Employer contacts or responses that do not meet the eligibility criteria for participation in the survey.
• Institutions, subjects, business schools or programmes that do not meet the inclusion requirements of the relevant QS ranking project.
• Survey responses outside the applicable five-year data collection window used in the calculation of the indicator.

QS Global Employer Survey

Primary source for the indicator. Collects employer nominations of institutions, faculties, subjects, business schools and programmes from individuals involved in graduate recruitment and hiring decisions. Used to calculate employer reputation scores.

Institution-Submitted Employer Contact Lists

Institutions may submit up to 400 eligible employer contacts. These contacts are used to support survey distribution and respondent recruitment for the Employer Survey.

Calculation Summary

The Employer Reputation indicator is calculated using validated responses from the QS Global Employer Survey. Employers involved in graduate recruitment nominate institutions, faculties, subjects, business schools and programmes that they would prefer to recruit from. Valid nominations are collected over a five-year period and weighted to give greater emphasis to more recent responses.

Following data validation and cleaning, nominations are aggregated at the relevant entity level (institution, subject, faculty, business school or programme). Ranking-specific weighting and adjustment rules are applied where relevant, before statistical transformations are used to reduce skewness and improve comparability between entities. The resulting values are normalised to produce a comparable Employer Reputation score for use within the relevant QS ranking methodology.

Project Rules

QS Subject Rankings

In our Subject Rankings, to stop institutions with a strong overall reputation getting an unfair advantage and to highlight specialist institutions, the following rules are applied:

• Employer reputation in the specific subject or faculty is compared to overall employer reputation.
• An extra boost may be applied to institutions identified as Specialists if they offer academic programs in the relevant subject or faculty area.
• Responses from employers expressing knowledge in less disciplines are weighted higher.

QS Business School Rankings

In the Employer Survey there is a separate section for respondents who selects 'Business Masters' as an option for the question on hiring decisions.

Employers are asked to select from an autocomplete list up to 10 business schools (either domestic or international) from which their company prefers to recruit international MBAs. 

We also ask respondents to select from a predefined list up to 3 business schools that they believe create the most value for businesses and society.

In Business School Rankings, the following rules are applied:

• Regional weighting is not applied.
• Nominations originated from the autocomplete selection (see above) are weighted higher than from the predefined list.
• Extra points are awarded if the nominator is from an industry that matches the ranking.
• Extra points are awarded if the nominator highlights that they would recruit from a programme that matches the ranking.
• Standalone business schools that receive nominations are boosted to combat the advantage that affiliate/child schools have due to the halo effect that may exist from the parent institution.
• If a business school or its parent institution is nominated in the main section of the survey in one of the below business-related subject areas, it receives a boost to reflect its broader brand awareness.
  • Global MBA Rankings - Accounting and Finance, Business and Management Studies, Marketing
  • Master's in Management - Accounting and Finance, Business and Management Studies, Economics and Econometrics, Marketing
  • Master's in Finance - Accounting and Finance, Business and Management Studies, Economics and Econometrics
  • Master's in Business Analytics - Business and Management Studies, Computer Science, Economics and Econometrics, Mathematics, Statistics and Operational Research
  • Master's in Marketing - Business and Management Studies, Communication, Cultural and Media Studies, Marketing, Statistics and Operational Research
  • Master's in Supply Chain Management - Accounting and Finance, Business and Management Studies, Economics and Econometrics,  Statistics and Operational Research
  • Online MBA Rankings (OMBA) - Accounting and Finance, Business and Management Studies, Marketing
  • Executive MBA Rankings (EMBA) - Accounting and Finance, Business and Management Studies, Marketing

QS International Trade Ranking

In our International Trade Rankings we use nominations for the following subject areas:

• Accounting and Finance
• Business and Management
• Economics

Scoring and Transformation Rules

Once the responses to the Employer Survey have been processed, we apply the following for all of the nominations.

International Weighted Count

• A weighted count of international nominations for each institution based on regional and country-level knowledge of a respondent, as well as a year of response.

Regional Familiarity Weights

• Weightings are applied based on the regional familiarity of respondents. Respondents are able to relate to more than one region. 
• If a respondent recommends an institution out of their regional or faculty familiarity the nomination has a lower weighting. 
• The aim is to ensure that over-represented areas are not obscuring nominations from less represented areas.

Country Weights

• Weightings are applied based on the location with which respondents consider themselves familiar. 
• The number of institutions in a country with international nominations is compared to the number of nominators from that country. Locations with a low participation rate are exempted from this to avoid small number effects.

Year Weights

• We use a combined total of the last FIVE years of survey nominations.
• The oldest nominations (5th year) are weighted at 25%, the 4th year is weighted at 50% and the most recent three years at full 100% weights.

Domestic Weighted Count

• Derive a weighted count of domestic nominations for each institution (excluding self-nominations). 
• This is adjusted against the number of institutions from that country with a certain level of international nominations and the total volume of responses from that country. 
• This is to reflect the fact that institutions in larger countries with more recognized institutions face more competition for nominations.

Normalizing and Transformation

• We normalize both domestic and international count to achieve a score out of 100.
• The two scores are combined with the relevant weights (see Methodology)
• Transformation techniques are applied to minimize the impact of outliers and scale the numbers to present a score out of 100 for the given faculty area.

QS World University Rankings

• 15% (50% - Domestic, 50% - International)

QS Subject Rankings

• 20% Arts and Humanities; 30% Engineering and Technology; 10% Life Sciences and Medicine; 20% Natural Sciences; 30% Social Sciences and Management
• (50% Domestic, 50% International)

QS Sustainability Rankings

• 3%

QS Regional Rankings - Arab Region, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, Sub-Saharan Africa 

• 20% (50% Domestic, 50% International)

QS Regional Rankings - Europe 

• 15% (50% Domestic, 50% International)

QS International Trade Ranking

• 15% MBA and Master's; 15% EMBA

QS Global MBA Rankings

• 35% (30% Domestic, 70% International)

QS Business Masters Rankings

• 30% (60% Domestic, 40% International)

QS Online MBA Rankings

• 30% (60% Domestic, 40% International)

QS Executive MBA Rankings

• 30% (60% Domestic, 40% International)

• What does the Employer Reputation indicator measure?

Employer Reputation measures how employers perceive the quality, preparedness and relevance of an institution's graduates. It is based on nominations collected through the QS Global Employer Survey from individuals involved in graduate recruitment and hiring decisions.

• Why is employer reputation important in higher education rankings?

For many students, securing employment is a primary objective of higher education. Employer Reputation provides an external assessment of how institutions and programmes are regarded by the organisations that recruit graduates, offering a labour-market perspective that complements measures of teaching, research and student experience.

• Does Employer Reputation measure actual graduate employment outcomes?

No. Employer Reputation measures employer perceptions and preferences rather than actual employment rates, salaries or career outcomes. It is designed to capture market recognition and employer confidence, which complements but does not replace outcome-based indicators.

• Who participates in the QS Global Employer Survey?

The survey is completed by individuals involved in graduate recruitment and hiring decisions within public-sector, private-sector and other employing organisations. Higher education institutions and research institutes are not eligible as employer respondents within the survey methodology.

• How are employers selected for the survey?

QS maintains a large global employer database and also accepts eligible employer contact submissions from institutions. Institutions may submit up to 400 employer contacts, although all respondents must pass eligibility and validation checks before their responses can be included.

• Can institutions directly influence their Employer Reputation score by submitting employer contacts?

Institutions can contribute eligible employer contacts for survey outreach, but they cannot control how respondents answer the survey. QS applies validation, quality assurance and data cleaning processes to safeguard the integrity of the results.

• Why are five years of survey data used?

Employer perceptions tend to develop gradually and can fluctuate from year to year. Using five years of survey data improves statistical stability and provides a more reliable measure of sustained employer recognition.

• Why are recent survey responses weighted more heavily than older responses?

The weighting system balances stability with responsiveness. Recent employer opinions are more likely to reflect current institutional performance and graduate quality, while older responses help preserve continuity and reduce volatility.

• How are the five years weighted?

Responses from the three most recent survey years are weighted at 100%, the fourth year at 50%, and the oldest year at 25%.

• How does QS ensure survey quality?

QS applies extensive validation, verification and data-quality procedures. Invalid, duplicate, incomplete or otherwise ineligible responses are excluded before calculations are performed. Specific validation procedures are not fully disclosed in order to protect the integrity of the methodology.

• Does the indicator favour large or well-known institutions?

Employer reputation naturally reflects visibility and recognition within the labour market, which can benefit established institutions. However, QS incorporates statistical processing and ranking-specific adjustments, especially in Subject Rankings and Business School Rankings, to help recognise specialist strengths and reduce certain forms of institutional advantage.

• How are specialist institutions treated?

In Subject Rankings, subject-level employer reputation is assessed relative to overall institutional reputation, and additional adjustments may be applied to recognised specialist institutions. These measures are designed to ensure that focused excellence is appropriately recognised.

• Why might an institution with strong graduate outcomes have a lower Employer Reputation score?

Graduate outcomes and employer reputation measure different concepts. An institution may produce excellent outcomes but have lower visibility among employers, particularly internationally. Conversely, institutions with strong historical reputations may continue to receive significant employer recognition.

• Does Employer Reputation measure domestic or international reputation?

Both. Employers can nominate domestic and international institutions, allowing the indicator to capture employer recognition across different geographic contexts.

• How are subject-level Employer Reputation scores calculated?

Subject Rankings use employer responses linked to specific disciplines, employer knowledge areas and subject classifications. Additional subject-specific adjustments help ensure fair comparisons between institutions.

• Why can scores differ between an institution's overall ranking and its subject rankings?

Employers may perceive an institution very differently across disciplines. Some institutions have particularly strong reputations in specific subject areas that exceed their overall institutional reputation.

• How is Employer Reputation used in Business School Rankings?

Business School Rankings use a dedicated section of the Employer Survey. Additional weightings may be applied based on programme relevance, industry alignment, business school status and broader business-related reputation.

• Does the indicator measure employer satisfaction with graduates?

Not directly. The indicator measures employer perceptions and recruitment preferences rather than formal employer satisfaction ratings. However, employer nominations may be influenced by previous experiences recruiting graduates from an institution.

• Why doesn't QS publish all validation rules?

Full disclosure of all validation procedures could increase the risk of gaming and undermine data integrity. QS therefore maintains transparency regarding methodology while protecting the operational details of survey validation and fraud prevention processes.

• Can newer institutions perform well in Employer Reputation?

Yes, particularly where they have developed strong employer partnerships, produced successful graduates or established a strong reputation within specific sectors or disciplines. However, reputation generally develops over time, so newer institutions may face challenges in achieving recognition comparable to long-established providers.

• Is Employer Reputation a measure of teaching quality?

No. Employer Reputation is not a direct measure of teaching quality. Instead, it reflects employer perceptions of the graduates produced by an institution. It should therefore be interpreted alongside indicators relating to teaching, research, student experience and graduate outcomes.

• How should students use Employer Reputation when comparing institutions?

Students should view Employer Reputation as one indicator among several. It provides valuable insight into how employers perceive institutions and programmes, but should be considered alongside factors such as course content, learning environment, location, cost, student support and graduate outcomes.

• How should institutions use Employer Reputation results?

Institutions should use the indicator as a benchmarking and diagnostic tool rather than a standalone strategic objective. The greatest value comes from understanding what employer perceptions reveal about graduate preparedness, employer engagement and institutional visibility within the labour market.

• Could the methodology evolve in the future?

Yes. Future development may explore additional segmentation of employer responses, greater integration with employability and employer-engagement measures, improved geographic balancing mechanisms, or the incorporation of complementary data sources where these enhance validity and comparability.