Ranking The Unrankable: A Veterinary Education Series. Part 3: Global prestige, local irrelevance (#591)

When Research Overshadows Reality.

If U.S. rankings are built on reputation, global rankings promise something more substantial.

More data.

More rigor.

More objectivity.

And so, we turn to QS World University Rankings, with its elegant formulas, its global reach, and its reassuring sense that this time, the numbers must mean something.

But do they?

The Metrics of Prestige

QS rankings are built on a combination of indicators:

Academic reputation.

Employer reputation.

Research citations.

H-index (research impact).

International research networks.

At first glance, this feels like progress.

There are numbers.There is data.There is structure.

Unlike U.S. News, this is not simply opinion.

It is quantified influence.

The Rise of Research as Currency

But look more closely, and a pattern emerges.

The system places significant weight on:

Publications.

Citations.

Global academic visibility.

In other words:

Research becomes the dominant currency of ranking.

And institutions respond accordingly.

Because what is measured is what is valued.

The Academic Center of Gravity

This creates a shift.

A gravitational pull toward research.

Faculty are rewarded for publishing.

Institutions are rewarded for citations.

Global collaborations are prioritized.

All of this is valuable.

But it raises a question:

Is research output the same as educational quality?

The Clinical Reality

Veterinary medicine does not live primarily in journals.

It lives:

In examination rooms.

In operating theaters.

On farms.

In wildlife reserves.

In late-night emergency cases

It lives in uncertainty, judgment, and human-animal relationships.

These are not easily captured by:

Citation counts.

H-indices.

Global reputation surveys.

And yet, these are the metrics that shape global rankings.

The Mismatch

Here lies the central tension.

A school may:

Publish extensively.

Be cited globally.

Rank highly in QS.

And still:

Offer uneven clinical exposure.

Struggle with student support.

Graduate veterinarians with variable confidence.

Conversely, a school deeply embedded in:

Community practice.

Hands-on clinical training.

Regional service.

may rank lower simply because it is less visible in the academic literature.

What QS Really Measures

QS does not claim to measure teaching quality.

Nor does it claim to measure clinical excellence.

It measures:

Global academic influence.

And it does this quite effectively.

But influence is not the same as impact - at least not in the way veterinary medicine defines it.

The Illusion of Objectivity

Because QS uses numbers, it feels objective.

But numbers do not eliminate bias.

They simply encode it differently.

The choice of metrics - citations, reputation, networks - reflects a particular view of what matters.

A view rooted in:

Academia.

Research output.

Global visibility.

Not necessarily in:

Clinical competence.

Compassion.

Practical skill.

The International Echo Chamber

There is another subtle effect.

Global rankings amplify global voices.

Institutions that are already visible become more visible.

Those that are regionally focused - no matter how effective - remain quieter.

This creates an echo chamber of prestige, where recognition circulates among the already recognized.

A Familiar Pattern

We begin to see a pattern across ranking systems:

U.S. News - rewards reputation

QS - rewards research visibility

Both are legitimate in their own domains.

But neither fully captures the essence of veterinary education.

A Different Kind of Excellence

What would it mean to rank a veterinary school based on:

The confidence of its graduates in their first year of practice?

The trust of the communities it serves?

The outcomes of the animals in its care?

These are harder questions.

They resist simplification.

Which is precisely why they are rarely asked.

Final Thought

Global rankings offer the comfort of numbers.

But veterinary medicine is not easily reduced to numbers.

It is a profession grounded in:

Judgment.

Experience.

Relationships.

And these do not scale well across global metrics.

So, we are left with a quiet truth:

A school can be globally prestigious - and locally irrelevant.

And the challenge, for all of us, is to know the difference.

Coming Next

Part 4: Different Questions, Different Answers: The Inconvenient Truth Behind Conflicting Rankings.

Recommended Reading

U.S. News reveals how it ranks veterinary schools. https://www.dvm360.com/view/us-news-reveals-how-it-ranks-veterinary-schools

Veterinary schools - which ones are the best? https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4502844/

Proposal of an objective formula-based model for equitable ranking of veterinary colleges. https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/veterinary-science/articles/10.3389/fvets.2025.1526980/full?utm_source=chatgpt.com

Vet School Rankings are a Costly Joke. https://allscience.substack.com/p/vet-school-rankings-are-a-costly

#bunyipsbooksbeyond