Clarivate, which does the reputational surveys for the USNews.com global university rankings, reveals something that neither the QS (“Quirky Silliness”) or THE rankings reveal: the geographic distribution of evaluators: here. There are only about 3,400 respondents, of whom 665 are in the United States and 618 in China: so that’s one-third of the respondents from two countries. Japan has a stunning 465 respondents, while all of Central and South America have only 250 respondents. Hong Kong, alone, has 149 respondents, while Germany has merely 21 and Spain 34. Saudi Arabia, which has been gaming these rankings for years, has 60 respondents, while India has only 48. Turkey has a remarkable 114 respondents. The British Commonwealth countries have about 350 respondents, no doubt a boon for Oxford, Cambridge and LSE.

We have noted before that the QS reputation results are surely an artifact of the geographic distribution of respondents, and it would be nice if, like USNews.com, they would disclose the geographic distribution of evaluators.