QS Rankings don't just stand for "quirky silliness"...

...as we've noted before, but also, it turns out, for "quite suspicious," as in you can pay for a result you like.  Of the three "world university" rankings, QS is clearly the most idiosyncratic and, it turns out, corrupt as well.  THES is probably the best (THES severed its ties with QS a number of years ago, wisely), and the Shanghai rankings are fine, once you understand they are really rankings of schools by strength in the sciences, medicine, and engineering, and little else.  All of them are skewed towards strength in the natural sciences, medicine and engineering to some degree by virtue of the use of citation measures.