QS MidWeek Brief - July 30, 2025

Happy Midweek!

In this edition, we're diving into some of the specific challenges facing higher education institutions. There's a lot to unpack. 

Despite the proven value and career success of graduates from creative fields, such programmes are often the first to face cuts in universities. This raises an important question: how does society perceive the purpose and value of higher education? This week also features an important commentary on the increasingly scrutinized world of university rankings by Professor Dawn Freshwater, Vice Chancellor of University of Auckland. 

As this marks my final week at QS, this is my concluding message for the Midweek Brief. It's been a pleasure serving as Deputy Editor, and I thank you for always tuning in.

Enjoy the read, 

Afifah Darke

Deputy Editor, QS

Creative Cull

By Nick Harland

“Cardiff University is considered one of the best music departments, notwithstanding Oxbridge, in the UK,” Sir Karl Jenkins, the musician, composer and Cardiff alumni told the BBC last year. Sir Jenkins is one of many notable graduates of Cardiff’s School of Music: its alumni list also includes world famous composers, the head of music departments at other universities, and even a judge on a national TV singing show.

So, when it was announced in January 2025 that the university’s music school was threatened with cuts, there was widespread outrage. A petition to save a course attracted more than 25,000 signatures, and it was referenced in an open letter to the UK Prime Minister signed by the likes of popular musicians including Ed Sheeran, Coldplay, Stormzy and Harry Styles.

The announcement may have attracted outrage from outside the university sector, but for those within the industry, it probably didn’t come as such a big surprise. Because when universities announce cuts, as they seem to be doing with increasing regularity nowadays, creative subjects like music are often first on the chopping board.

"There's a perception that programmes like these just don’t make any money,” says Joe O’Connell, a lecturer in music at Cardiff University. "There's also that classic attitude of: a music degree, what are you going to do with that?”

As it turns out, students doing creative degrees go on to do plenty of worthwhile things. Over 90 percent of O’Connell’s students move into graduate-level employment or further. Research carried out by The Creative Industries Policy and Evidence Centre (The Creative PEC) also found that arts and culture graduates are more likely to be using what they learned during their studies in their current work than graduates of other subjects. Graduates of several creative degrees, including music, were also more likely to agree that their work is meaningful and important to them.

"I had the best four years of my life,” says Jackie Yip, a graduate of Cardiff University’s School of Music. " I was a shell of a human being before I joined university and this school particularly, because me and my twin sister grew up in a rural seaside town with next to no diversity (Yip is of East Asian descent). So, as you can imagine, going to school was very, very tough. Music was a real outlet for me.”

For Yip, studying a creative degree gave her a range of transferable skills that have not only had a big impact on her career, but transformed her as a person. She counts communication, perseverance, resilience, confidence and teamwork among them.

“Musicians are constantly collaborating with others to do their music and do their craft. And whatever you do for a career, you have to work as a team. I certainly know who the team players are in my industry. [I can tell apart] those who have arts and creative backgrounds from those who studied in solitude for three or four years."

Yip’s story also goes some way to dispelling the myth that creative students have nowhere to go after graduating. She says her degree gave her the confidence to run as president of the student union, which she won, before moving into the fundraising office at Cardiff University. She has since been headhunted by Oxford, which receives the most donations of any UK university.

Why creative degrees are sparking debate over the purpose and value of higher education.

Nick is a freelance copywriter, writer and founder of Big Bang Copy. As a freelancer, he has written content for Specsavers, Numan, Ricoh, Hearst and many more. He specialises in education, healthcare and music, but has written about everything from financial services to luxury travel. In 2021, he founded the copywriting agency Big Bang Copy. He works with a small network of freelancers on bigger copywriting projects such as website rewrites or marketing campaigns.

Global University Rankings in an Age of Disruption

By Professor Dawn Freshwater

At this time of year, thousands of higher education institutions receive the embargoed rankings results. After weeks of anticipation, they quickly analyse both their own performance and that of the sector as a whole. Rankings shape reputation and strategy, influencing the very culture of a university. But as the sector faces global shifts, challenges, and disruption, rankings themselves are coming under increased scrutiny. Waipapa Taumata Rau, University of Auckland Vice Chancellor Professor Dawn Freshwater examines the evolving rankings world.

A declaration is necessary to preface this commentary. As a global higher education leader, I have celebrated the rankings achievements at institutions across three different regions. And I confess I continue to monitor the rankings of those institutions, alongside my current one. Whatever your opinion of university rankings, they do offer some recognition for the hard work, commitment and strategic effort it takes to achieve institutional goals.

Yet, for me, they have never been the primary goal. Ranking success is an outcome of the purposeful and meaningful mission that sits at the heart of sector. It is not the main play.

Thus, a top-100 ranking is incidental to the efforts made in teaching, learning, research and the innovation delivered to our communities. In summary, a high ranking is an endorsement of the work of thousands of academics, professional staff and students. 

The year 2025 has exposed the pressures tertiary education has endured for more than a decade. The sector is grappling with declining funding, concerns about the sustainability and quality of mass higher education, challenges to freedom of expression and academic freedom, questions around institutional neutrality and autonomy, and the rapid rise of technology and AI. Geopolitical tensions have arrived on campuses around the globe.

At the same time, we have had to respond to societal and industry challenges about the value of higher education, concerns about the employability of graduates and accusations of “wokeness”.

In short, for many, our social licence has been seriously eroded. In some countries, this loss of licence is serious. Other countries are witnessing this loss in the shadows. It is paradoxical that at the same time society is challenging the university model, many universities are experiencing record domestic enrolments.

I am interested in the origins of this loss of social licence. The reasons are multifaceted, and while it may be tempting to point to global trends and political forces, we must also look to ourselves. We must accept some accountability and explore how we have contributed to this loss of society’s support and belief in what we do.

University rankings systems were initially designed to provide transparency in a crowded and opaque higher education sector. Specialist rankings agencies have developed systems to help academics, students, funders, and policymakers navigate the complex higher education sector and make informed choices about where to work, study or engage. Rankings have provided a snapshot of institutional prestige and reputation, academic performance and global competitiveness. But increasingly, they have turned into an Olympics for the sector, and from the outside looking in, all about us, our status and our brand, rather than what we do. Some people have become cynical.

University rankings began in the mid-20th century and have grown rapidly in the 21st, especially since the launch of the QS World University Rankings in 2004. In the past few years, the rankings have included a more diverse and globally distributed group of universities. But at the same time, a growing number of elite universities have begun to withdraw from long-established ranking systems. The United States’ Harvard and Yale Law Schools, the University of Zurich in Switzerland, Utrecht University in the Netherlands, China’s Renmin and Nanjing universities, South Africa’s Rhodes University, and some Indian Institutes of Technology are among the higher education institutions that have rejected the rankings system. There is no single reason for these withdrawals, but the institutions that have chosen to walk away from rankings systems are sending a strong message. There is growing disillusionment in modern rankings.

Find out why there should be a more holistic approach to university rankings

Professor Dawn Freshwater leads Waipapa Taumata Rau, University of Auckland, which retained its #65 QS World University Ranking for 2026.