This lens assesses the ability of the institution to propel graduates into strong careers, as well as the strength of connections the institution has with employers. We also survey alumni to ask how their institutions prepared them for their careers, measure the impact of research into relevant SDG's, and then add national-level statistics on Employment. These are aggregated to produce a score.
Weight of metrics in Employability and Opportunities:
| Code | Metric | Metric Weight |
| EO1 | Employer Reputation | 2% |
| EO2 | Research Impact on SDGs for Employment and Opportunities | 4% |
| EO3 | Job Preparedness (Graduates View) | 1% |
| EO4 | Employment and Opportunities National Statistics | 1% |
| EO5 | Partnerships with Industry | 2% |
| EO6 | Skills Satisfaction | 1% |
EO1. Employer Reputation
| Sub metric | Description | Scoring |
| EO1.1 | Taken from our QS Employer Reputation survey, this metric indicates how well an institution is connected to the employment sector. | The score is taken from the most recent QS Employer Reputation survey. Note that we evaluate a much larger set of institutions than appear in the published ranking. The score used here is the underlying score, then scaled between 0 and 100. |
EO2. Research Impact on SDGs for Employment and Opportunities
Institutions - aside from being employers and producing employment ready graduates - can also support the wider economy and society by producing research that contributes to economic growth, innovation, stability and other adjacent areas of focus.
| Sub metric | Description | Scoring |
| EO2.1 | Research output produced by institutions, classified by Elsevier as research in SDG 8 (Decent Work & Economic Growth), SDG 9 (Industry, innovation and Infrastructure) and SDG 16 (Peace, Justice & Strong Institutions) | A score from 0 to 100 per SDG is produced using this methodology, and then averaged into an overall score, subject to at least two of the three mentioned SDG scores being non-zero. |
EO3. Job Preparedness (Graduates View)
| Sub metric | Description | Scoring |
| EO3.1 | As part of QS Employer Reputation Survey, we ask respondents about what institution they graduated from and to what extent the skills gained during their latest degree were relevant to their current work activities. Respondents rate this applicability on a scale from 0 to 10, with 10 representing the highest level of alignment. |
Based on the responses, we calculate an average relevance score for each institution (ranging from 0 to 10). When responses are limited, we apply a sliding scale adjustment until the minimum threshold is met. Institutions with a negligible response rate are assigned a baseline score either considering their QS World University Rankings' performance group or, if not available, then country/territory or region. Moreover, scores are fine-tuned, taking into account the unanimity in votes for each country/territory or region. Later on, the scores are standardized using z-scores and then scaled to range between 0 and 100. |
EO4. Employment and Opportunities National Statistics
| Sub metric | Description | Scoring |
| EO4.1 | A measure of a country's unemployment, as a proxy for the availability of work opportunities for graduates. Unemployment rate data is extracted from World Bank. | The percentage of unemployed workforce is taken away from 100 to calculate national employment rate and then the figures are z-scored and scaled between 0 and 100. |
EO5. Research Partnerships with Industry
This metric was previously under 'Knowledge Exchange' but we received useful feedback that it was more suited to this lens.
| Sub metric | Description | Scoring |
| EO5.1 |
Institutions who have active research partnerships with companies in the Forbes 2000 list.
This metric is designed to showcase institutions with strong industrial partnerships for their research. Partnerships such as these tend to mean that the research is applied in nature, which can bring additional impact in comparison to purely academic-on-academic research. |
The number of distinct companies (partners) per institution is normalized and scored between 0 and 100. |
EO6. Skills Satisfaction
| Sub metric | Description | Scoring |
| E06.1 |
This sub metric assesses the quality of the skills that an institution's graduates possess, as reported by employers in our QS Global Employer Survey. |
For each institution, we calculate the share of satisfied and very satisfied respondents, which forms the base score for the calculations. The "Very Satisfied" responses carry a higher weighting in the final results. Later on, the scores are standardized using z-scores and then scaled to range between 0 and 100. |