Times Higher Education

THE charges universities for consultancy services that help institutions understand and improve their ranking performance, often through data benchmarks and institutional diagnostic reports. The firm also licenses its ranking brand to institutions for marketing purposes and sells institutional data subscriptions to governments and university administrators. Events sponsorships tied to rankings announcements contribute additional revenue, particularly for the Asia and Middle East summits.

A consortium led by the founder of the Russian-language education publication Textterra acquired THE in February 2025, according to Sky News. Before that, the firm was owned by UK private equity group Inflexion, which had held it since 2019. THE was originally part of TPG Capital's portfolio after being divested from News Corporation in 2005.

THE maintains a formal separation between its journalism division and its rankings and consulting arm. An independent editorial board governs editorial content, though external observers periodically question the firewall when the outlet covers universities that are also rankings clients. The firm publicly states that commercial relationships do not influence its World University Rankings methodology.

Yes, THE and QS were partners on a joint rankings publication until 2010, when THE partnered with Thomson Reuters for data and later with Elsevier. Since the split, the two firms compete on methodology — THE uses 18 performance indicators compared to QS's emphasis on reputation surveys. Both sell consultancy and brand-licensing services to the same university clients.

THE gathers institutional performance data covering teaching, research environment, research quality, international outlook, and industry income across its ranked universities. It also collects data for its Impact Rankings tied to UN Sustainable Development Goals, and through its subscription products, universities and governments can access benchmarking datasets on research output, funding, and student demographics.