The Times Higher Education University Ranking and it sucks

At work, the new university ranking of the Times Higher Education was brought up. Since the UK schools rank very high and many US schools do not, it became the talk of the day in the office.

Before spitting out my 2cents, here's the disclosure: neither of my alma mater (college and grad school) are ranked well. Maybe that's why I don't like it.

First, let's see the methodology:
50% is in subjective surveys:
Peer review/survey: 40%; employer survey: 10%

50% is in "objective" numbers:
Faculty/student ratio: 20%; Citation/Faculty ration: 20%
International Faculty: 5%; International Student: 5%

I'd like to comment on two of the six measures.
The first is the "citation/faculty" ratio. It measures the importance of research by quantify the number of publication per faculty member being cited by other researchers. The citation is used instead of publications to eliminate junk papers nobody is reading/using.

In short, this number measures the quality of the faculty in research.

The second is the "peer review/survey", in which a certain group of people (Times does say much about what this group is) ranks a school's reputation. Since it counts 40%, this score basically determines the ranking.

Now let's see some examples.

First, if ranked only by "citation/faculty", which measures research quality:
The top 21 schools (98-100) include 16 US, 2 Canadian, 2 Switzerland, & 1 Israel schools. The US schools include Harvard, Stanford, MIT, a bunch of the rest Ivy League schools as well as Berkeley, UCLA, UCSD, and Minnesota.

Not bad.

The top UK schools in this category are UCL (90, 37th) and Cambridge (89, 39th), which are the 37th & 39th, respectively. Most of the UK schools are ranked lower than 100th by this measure.

Other worth mentioning schools are: Peking (35 &188th) from China and Monash (42 & 176th) from Australia.

Now let's how the peer survey says:

Harvard (100 & 1-23rd), Peking (100 & 1-23rd), JHU (98 & 28-32nd), Monash (98 & 28-32nd), Minnesota (74 & 106th).

So, the "peer" believes Peking is as good as Harvard; JHU is as good as Monash while worse than Peking; Minnesota sucks.

The final ranking is dominated by the peer survey score:
Harvard (100 & 1st), JHU (94 & 13th),

Minnesota (67 & 105th),

Peking (78 & 52nd), Monash (80 & 45th).

All I'm trying to say is that if the "peer" ranks Harvard's reputation is the same as Peking, while JHU is a little less, it's a group of idiots who knows nothing about college education.