Rankings Masterclass

Join us on 6 November 2026 for a dedicated Rankings Masterclass after the QS Higher Ed Summit: Asia Pacific 2026.

How well is your university managing its reputation?

During this dedicated Rankings Masterclass on 6 November 2026 at Bali International Convention Centre, you’ll go beyond the basics to unpack ranking methodologies, learn to enhance your institution's global visibility and reputation by using data to identify gaps in reputation, and design a reputation strategy around your institutional reality.

You’ll build a deeper understanding of rankings, sharpen your ability to interpret data and gain fresh perspectives to help shape your institution’s future.

The Rankings Masterclass is available as an optional add-on to your QS Higher Ed Summit: Asia Pacific 2026 registration. Register via the Summit to add this Masterclass to your booking.

Gain practical insight
Learn how rankings can be used as a tool for storytelling, strategy, and improvement.

Interactive sessions

Take part in workshops devised to give you experience you can take back to your institution.

Learn from your peers

Hear directly from university leaders as they share their perspectives in a panel discussion.

What to expect

Hear from QS experts and industry peers as they share insights into managing your reputation. Take part in hands-on workshops and connect with fellow professionals throughout the day.

Agenda

The agenda is subject to change.

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Time (GMT+8)	Session
9:00–10:20	Refresher: Understanding the QS World University Rankings (optional session)	This optional kick-off session provides a refresher on the QS World University Rankings methodology, indicators, and data framework. Participants will revisit the rankings portfolio, explore the lenses, indicators, and weightings that shape performance outcomes, and examine key distinctions between the QS World University Rankings and QS Asia Rankings. The session will also outline how data is collected, including the respective roles of institutional submissions and third-party sources.
10:20–10:30	Networking break
10:30–10:50	What's Really at Stake? Managing Institutional Reputation	Reputation drives university rankings, but rankings are only the most visible part of a much bigger picture. In this 20-minute conversation, Ben Sowter reflects on why institutional reputation matters strategically: how it shapes recruitment, partnerships, funding decisions and long-term positioning, and why institutions that manage it deliberately tend to protect and grow it more effectively over time. Drawing on QS's vantage point across thousands of institutions and decades of reputation data, Ben sets the stakes for the sessions that follow.
10:50–11:20	Managing Institutional Reputation through Data-Driven Mapping	Perception and reality rarely align perfectly, and that gap is where reputation risk and opportunity both live. In this 30-minute interactive session, participants work in small groups using a simple framework for reading their institution's reputation data against how the institution is actually regarded, learning to spot where strong performance goes unnoticed, where perception runs ahead of substance, and where the two are converging or diverging. Groups leave with the framework and a first practice run applying it to their own institution, ready to take further on their own.
11:20–12:20	What Actually Moved the Needle? Measuring Five Years of Reputation Gains	Three institutions that improved their Academic and Employer Reputation scores the most over the past five years share what it actually took. In this 60-minute panel, participants move past the theory into the practicalities: the roadblocks each institution ran into internally (budget, buy-in, coordination across faculties) and how they worked around them, the choices that paid off, and the ones that did not. Expect specific, first-hand accounts rather than a general playbook, useful precisely because reputation gains rarely follow a single formula.
12:20–13:20	Networking lunch
13:20–15:20	Reputation By Design: Practical Strategies for Real-World Improvement	This two-part, consultant-led session is for professionals who need tangible reputation-building approaches tied to institutional reality. We cover practical guidelines, then move to an applied group exercise to translate those guidelines into a prioritised action plan.
15:20–15:35	Roundup of the day	A summary of the day's learning and key takeaways
15:35–16:00	Q&A
16:00–17:30	Networking reception