University Rankings first came into existence in 2004 by QS, and THE also launched out in 2004. Henceforward it become a hot topic of education every year. They are quite important for the status and prestige of universities, but not all in all. A real educator and smart investor should know their blind point. A university should develop their own character and should not let rankings pull their nose to run here and there.
It is true that every famous university are counting how many prime ministers, presidents and mayors they had nourished for their countries, but American universities are counting how many presidents they had created for other countries besides their own country. But something rankings cannot show out. The Chicago University had established the world’s first human-caused self-sustaining nuclear reaction which ultimately lead to birth of nuclear bomb that ended World War II and saved most lives among world universities. The Chicago scholar is a term named for those famous scholars in their aspect. The Columbia University had the Pulitzer Prize is the most important prize just after the Nobel Prize.
How do they do their rankings, one of the important items is how many international students they have. So recently when Trump wanted to cut all international students of Harvard, it aroused strong objection. But in Hong Kong, all students from mainland China are counted as international students and not local or domestic. Why? Because it has such a counting for long, long time before the re-unification. In time of British Colony, it was absolutely correct, but now they do not want to change, thus the rankings are higher and higher as mainland students are more and more. The Faculty of Dentistry of Hong Kong University always ranks number one in the world, but local people like to attend dentist in mainland China for the price is extremely low.
In writing doctoral or master dissertation, when you refer to other dissertation in other University, those can a higher merit and will accumulate higher ranking. China noticed all researchers should refer their dissertation to their related groups inside China and not outside, and thus their rankings are higher and higher.
So what should investors mind? Who generated TSMC, one of top 10 enterprises of the world and produced 90% of high end chips of the world. Where do their engineers from? Also we have AMD and MSCI, which universities supported them. There are godfathers of semi-conductors, where are they from? Please refer to my YouTube Video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe3QO45GGek&t=14s
They are from National Taiwan University, National Tsinghua University (in Taiwan) and Taipei University of Science & Technology. India had 1.4 billion population, China 1.3 billion, and also G7 countries (except US), who can nourish so many godfathers in chips, and listed on top 10 of the world? Not a single university ranking can make clear this for investors. So no matter for educator or investors, should find out something that rankings cannot shown!!! This is the most important point.