More than Our Rank initiative
Keele University is pleased to participate in the More Than Our Rank initiative. Global rankings are relied upon heavily by students, employers and funders, often without any critical assessment as to what they indicate.
Our university performs well in Impact and International Outlook Rankings which map closely to our mission, but less well in the World University Rankings overall which does not reflect Keele. We recognise that generally speaking the global university rankings reward older, wealthier, larger, research-intensive institutions. As a university committed to equality, diversity and inclusion, and responsible research assessment, we believe it is important to acknowledge this.
Keele University is More Than Our Rank across many dimensions. For example, the rankings fail to capture our widening participation rates, where of our current student population, almost 40% are defined as coming from areas of low participation in higher education. They fail to capture the ways in which we are transforming our local community, by generating £200m per year in the local economy and supporting over 600 local businesses since 2017, which in turn leads to the creations of hundreds of new jobs. They do not show that 96% of Keele graduates are employed or in further education just six months after graduating. Neither do they capture the significant real-world impacts of our research from our ground-breaking research into glyosciences, innovative trials in smart energy and green technology, research around food security, to neglected tropical diseases, global health and sustainable futures.
We urge the users of the global rankings to be critical in their interpretation of them, and to recognise that universities are so much More Than Their Rank.