The QS World University Rankings: Sustainability provides students with a unique lens on which institutions are demonstrating a commitment to a more sustainable existence. More than just the commitment, it looks for outwards evidence of this - from the impact that alumni are making in science and technology to solve climate issues, to the impact of research being done across the UN's 17 sustainable development goals. It evaluates the social and environmental impact of universities as a center's of education and research, as well as a major employers with the operational sustainability challenges of any large and complex organization.
1 February 2024 - 15 April 2024 - Sustainability data collection open in HUB for QS World University Rankings: Sustainability 2025.
Whilst the majority of the data requested from institutions remains the same, we have included some new fields in HUB which relate to Environmental Impact, Social Impact and Governance.
We will be gathering data to assess institutions’ commitment to providing dedicated training and assessment on both the environmental and social aspects of sustainability. Institutions will be asked provide confirmation as to whether they provide this training and whether this is for staff and/or students, together with the training duration (number of hours).
We will be asking institutions to provide information about any tools they use to assess sustainability and literacy and knowledge; this includes one option which is Sulitest TASK, however institutions who use alternative assessment tools can provide evidence.
The data collected for the Governance category is being expanded to include confirmation of an institutional Sustainability Committee.
Data Reporting Period: Academic Year
For all data, it should cover the academic year previous to our rankings cycle. Our cycles start in November of each year - so, when the cycle begins in November 2023, we are collecting data for the 2022 academic year. This will be approximately January to December 2022 for the Southern Hemisphere, and August 2022 to July 2023 for the Northern Hemisphere.
Please note that for data submissions, the reporting period for the World University Rankings 2025 and the Sustainability Rankings 2025 is the same (as detailed above).
QS World University Rankings: Sustainability 2024 (2nd edition)
The 2nd edition of this ranking has three categories: Environmental Impact, Social Impact and Governance. With each category, there are a series of performance lenses, themselves composed of an aggregated set of individual metrics.
October 13th Update - Indicative category weights are now shown below. We aim to have lens weights public by November 3rd.
15 November 2023 update - weights for lenses and metrics are now published in full.
|
Category |
Overall Weight |
| 45% | |
| Environmental Impact | 45% |
| Governance | 10% |
Eligibility and Inclusion
To be eligible for this ranking in its current form the following condition was applied:
| Intent | Explanation |
| Eligibility for QS Rankings | Institutions must be eligible for QS World University Rankings, QS Rankings by Region or QS Rankings by Subject. Business Schools are not currently able to participate in this ranking. |
To be included in this evaluation, the following criteria is also applied:
| Intent | Explanation |
| Evidence of a research culture aligned with the UN's SDGs | Institutions must demonstrate a non-zero score in 'Research Impact on SDGs for Environmental Research (Environmental Impact category) |
| Institutions must demonstrate a non-zero score in at least 2 out of 4 SDG research metrics in the Social Impact category (see the individual lenses for this category). |
Inclusion in the evaluation vs. public results
As with any QS Ranking, we are typically able to evaluate a much larger set of institutions than we publish. The decision on which rank threshold to publish the results depends on a variety of factors, but most importantly on the data breadth and depth as well as the maturity of the rankings.
In the second edition of QS Sustainability Rankings, we were able to score more than 3,600 institutions based on Scopus and reputation data (which we can collect independently and without direct participation), as well as country-level data. So, even if an institution has not made the results publication threshold (e.g. top 1400 in the second edition) for the standalone rankings, institutions have a chance to be featured in the QS World University Ranking's Sustainability Metric.
A note regarding evidence:
In our QS HUB portal, different data fields have different forms for evidence. Some require a URL, some require an upload, and some require a supporting statement. One size doesn't fit all, and we understand that institutions may have a PDF rather than a link (e.g. a policy may be in their staff handbook, which is not linked on their website). Speak with our Institution Support Team - they are happy to help you provide the right evidence for the right questions.
All submissions are taken to be a true and open confirmation of that data point by the university. QS reserves the right to ask for further evidence where we are not confident in the submission. Any submissions found to be misleading will be rejected. Deliberate attempts by an institution to submit false data will result in penalties or exclusion from the ranking.
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