This survey aims to build a picture of the approaches to reputation management being taken by the world’s best universities and the resources they are deploying. The purpose is to provide global benchmarks to help leaders develop their operations. The results of this survey will be compared to previous iterations completed in 2007, 2015 and 2020, providing insights into global trends.

The project is being delivered by the World 100 Reputation Network – a group of 50 of the world’s best universities spanning 13 countries, managed by Times Higher Education. The network focuses on membership engagement opportunities, research, communications evaluation and training. More information about the Network is available at https://theworld100.com.

The summary findings will be available to all those who complete the questionnaire. A more detailed report is available to members of the W100 Network. Further details of W100 Research projects are available at Research Projects – The World 100.

This survey is being sent to leaders in reputation management / communications / marketing at universities in the top 200 of the leading global rankings. We are also conducting focus groups and interviews with members of the World 100 Reputation Network, please email info@theworld100.com if you would like to be involved in an interview or focus group. The findings will not be attributed to individual universities or respondents. But it will help us if you provide your name and university, so that we can analyse findings in more depth and explore if there are correlations or patterns; it will also allow us to ask you for more detailed explanations or examples where that is necessary or useful.

All results will be anonymised. 
Please note: This survey is intended to be answered by the person with the most senior role in reputation management at your university

Having issues accessing the survey?

Click the button below to access a Word version on the survey, and please submit your completed form to info@theworld100.com

The World 100 Network annual research project always aims to push the boundaries of understanding about global university reputation. The project for the 2022/23 membership year sought to gain some further understanding of the relationship between reputation and the recent focus of many universities on promoting activity around the sustainable development agenda.

How universities can demonstrate the impact of their research, teaching and engagement activities has become critical to success in an increasingly competitive and scrutinised higher education environment.

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), published first in 2015, have achieved broad support as a way of measuring progress in addressing key global challenges by governments, Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs), businesses and research funders.

Progress against the SDGs is therefore being used increasingly by universities worldwide as a way to demonstrate the impact of their research and teaching, and to build reputations with key stakeholder groups around the positive effect that they have on society.

Whilst contradictory in nature, a university’s goal is to make themselves both top of mind, or central, and distinctive in the sector in order to stand out. Understanding and ultimately influencing its brand perception is the way an institution can accomplish this.

Considering brands, Coca-Cola (in soft drinks) and McDonald’s (in fast food) are demonstrative examples of centrality – the first ones that come to mind in a large pool of comparable brands. On the other hand, brands high in distinctiveness are recognised for their uniqueness and rarely have direct rivalry with other relevant industry brands. Tesla (in automotive) is a prime example of this.

The World 100 Research Project for 2021/22 aimed to explore how the brand positioning of a university, from a centrality-distinctiveness perspective, can be influenced.

A challenge faced by higher education sector is setting one’s institution apart in a crowded industry that is fiercely competitive. This project critically analysed the brand positioning of universities and the interplay of reputation, ranking and pricing in the mix. Key elements of the research include surveying crucial international stakeholders such as prospective students and academics, and collecting views from institutional reputation leaders globally.

To help us cater reports to W100 members, we invited reputation leaders to participate by filling out a survey. These additional views will allowed for further, tailored analysis. The survey closed in September 2022, and the final report was released in October 2022.

COVID-19 has tested every university in ways that would have been unimaginable at the end of 2019. This has been the ultimate reputation test, and the World 100 Reputation Network was keen to chart the journey as best we can, to shed light on the challenges for reputation leaders in a unique time.

Last year we asked 10 quick questions of leading global universities (ranked in the top 200 of the world rankings) around managing the crisis of COVID-19 and their reputations. The longitudinal survey began in March 2020 and aimed to show the development of the crisis in terms of pandemic communications, university reputation and various other factors. 

Now, more than a year into the pandemic, we invited universities to think about the same questions to reflect on what’s happening now compared to six months ago. The survey ran in June 2021.

Data from the most recent survey is available below in an interactive dashboard. You can also visit our webinar page to explore the online sessions we hosted to explore the data from earlier waves of the study in more detail with industry experts.

The pandemic has highlighted the role of universities and academic research as a key contributor to society as never before. But have institutions been able to gain a reputation advantage from research they have shared during the period? 

The World 100 research project for 2020/2021 explored how universities have used the visibility of COVID-19 research to build profile.

Key elements of the research included undertaking public polling in a number of countries, surveying global academics, and collecting research evidence from around the globe. 

We also explored the experiences of W100 members – and particularly those teams involved with promoting research – to understand your experiences during the pandemic. 

The research also included interviewing media relations and research promotion leads. 

University communications, marketing, and international teams have been at the forefront of their institutions’ responses to the challenges presented by the Covid-19 pandemic.  But do you feel that you have enough resources and the right structures to meet the challenge?

The World 100 Reputation Network, the only group for leaders in reputation management at top global universities, is undertaking a survey to uncover what is being spent on reputation, and how the activities are structured.

All results will be anonymised. 
Please note: This survey is intended to be answered by the person with the most senior role in reputation management at your university

COVID-19 has tested every university in ways that would have been unimaginable at the end of 2019. This has been the ultimate reputation test, and the World 100 Reputation Network was keen to chart the journey as best we can, to shed light on the challenges for reputation leaders in a unique time.

Last year we asked 10 quick questions of leading global universities (ranked in the top 200 of the world rankings) around managing the crisis of COVID-19 and their reputations. The longitudinal survey began in March 2020 and aimed to show the development of the crisis in terms of pandemic communications, university reputation and various other factors. 

Now, more than a year into the pandemic, we invited universities to think about the same questions to reflect on what’s happening now compared to six months ago. The survey ran in June 2021 and is now closed. The dashboard below will be updated shortly.

2020 data from the survey is available below in an interactive dashboard. You can also visit our webinar page to explore the online sessions we hosted to explore the data in more detail with industry experts.

International partnerships between universities have traditionally been forged around student mobility, research collaborations, networks, and recruitment progression routes, which are determined by a range of factors (academic, financial etc.). However, the role of reputation in partnerships, and in particular those that universities describe as ‘strategic’, has not been comprehensively researched. The Word 100 Reputation Network has for the past decade and more undertaken annual research projects to push the boundaries of the understanding of reputation in global high education.

Our 2018/2019 Research project aimed to answer some key questions around the role of reputation in international partnerships. Who is responsible within institutions for the development and promotion of partnerships? What are the keys to successful working relationships amongst internal stakeholders? How effectively are universities using international partnerships to enhance their institutional brand and global profile and how prepared are they for any negative reputational changes their partners might encounter?

In consultation with World 100 members, we created an online survey tool to explore the role of reputation in international partnerships. The survey was designed to be completed by senior colleagues working in both communications and marketing and international/global affairs at top universities around the world. The two routes largely mirrored one another with slight variations to assess the current and perceived ideal level of support from corporate communications team in the development and promotion of international partnerships.

Between April and June of 2019 we invited directors of both functions at universities in the world’s top 200 (based on ranking in each of the four major world rankings used for Network membership eligibility – THE, QS, ARWU and US News and World Report), including those ranked as the top young universities.

Our 2017/18 research project, Brand Snapshot, reviewed the online brand profile of the best universities in the world – the top 50 in the world in all four main global rankings, plus W100 members and nominated peers.

Universities are putting more energy and thought into expressing their brand position as they compete for research funding, top students, and world-class academics. But there is a very weak understanding of brand difference or any formal impact assessment in the higher education sector other than via the rankings. As websites are one of the main ways audiences interact with universities and universities articulate their ‘brand’, our research project looked at brands online.

Each university was assessed by two independent analysts on key brand attributes between January and June 2018.

The research found that top universities really struggle to look or sound different when their websites are compared. 50 universities use the same or similar shades of blue, and the best online brands are not necessarily the highest ranked.

The project analysed the websites of 100 global institutions, finding that they adopted the same language, with phrases like ‘world impact’ and ‘challenging’ being repeated regularly.

“In such a competitive higher education world, universities have a long way to go in engaging the busy reader who looks at their website,” said Louise Simpson, Director of the World 100 Reputation Network. “Too many of them look and sound the same, and can’t explain what it is that makes them special. They really need to be much bolder both in the way they communicate, and in what they communicate. Good branding requires both creativity and decisiveness!”

• Student brands are better articulated than research brands.
• Brand propositions are not well differentiated between world top-ranked
universities; brand assets are similar among world top-ranked universities
• Brands are separated out between research, study and international, rather than
offered as an integrated expression of the whole university.
• There is no correlation between a high ranked university and a university with a
strong brand impact.

Academics and universities know that data matters when it comes to world university rankings. As a result, tremendous effort goes into getting research in the right journals and maximizing citations. However, what is sometimes forgotten is that the biggest indicator of ranking is reputation, i.e. the opinion of published scholars and employers. This actually forms a third of the final THE score and half of the QS score. Thousands of academics and employers from across the globe determine which universities are the best in their fields. How do they make their choices?

Our 2016/2017 Research project aimed to explore how academics and employers vote, their influence and its impact on university reputation by answering the following key questions: What influences academics, professional staff and employers to consider their nominated universities to be the absolute best of a world-class elite group? How readily could their perceptions be altered year to year? And ultimately, what can those in charge of universities’ reputation management do to put their institutions in the spotlight for these audiences?

We employed both quantitative and qualitative research methods, using a global online survey of academic faculty and professional staff working at top universities, qualitative interviews with academic faculty at global universities and a global online survey of employers to inform the research. In total, 103 universities, and their faculty/staff, across 30 countries contributed to this research by way of facilitation, interview or survey completion.

The research found that whilst many academics see the rankings as fundamentally flawed, the rankings are the first place most go to get a feel for a university’s reputation or see how they their own institution is performing.

Digital communications is essential for all global organizations but critical for those aimed at young people. In addition to our annual research project for W100 members, the World 100 set out to explore approaches to online communications at top global universities. The research explores budgets, teams, in-house capacity, outsourcing, approaches to monitoring and evaluating digital communications, policies and guidelines, internal training and more – everything that covers their digital approach.

The survey was developed in conjunction with digital communications representatives from seven leading global universities in the UK, Europe and North America. The research findings are based on survey responses from heads of digital at 37 universities across 15 countries.

The research indicates that digital is a highly important, and increasingly intrinsic part of communications in universities. Most communications will be digital communications in the future, so teams are less likely to be separate from the rest of communications and marketing or even have digital in their job title, as everyone will be ‘digital’. However, there is probably a generational disconnect, with senior leaders being less familiar with using digital (especially twitter) than younger managers.