The latest 2024 edition of QS World University Rankings features 1,500 institutions across 104 locations, and ranks Otago in 206th place (https://www.topuniversities.com/world-university-rankings) Yet Otago University explicitly claims that these QS rankings put it in "the top 1% of universities in the world". They certainly do not. When will Otago withdraw its false advertising claim? The top 1% of universities according to QS are as follows:
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Oxford
Cambridge
Harvard
Stanford
Imperial College London
ETH Zurich
National University of Singapore
University College London
Berkeley University, California
Chicago University
University of Pennsylvania
Cornell
University of Melbourne
Caltech
Yale
Peking University
Princeton
Otago claims to be ranked alongside the likes of Princeton, Yale, Chicago, Stanford, Harvard, Berkeley, & Oxbridge. How is the Advertising Standards Board, Tertiary Education Commission & Education Minister letting it continue to get away with stating something that is patently untrue? Universities are meant to stand, more than anything else, for a pursuit of the truth. That is why they have the word "veritas" built into their name. How does ranking yourself in the top 1%, when you are not in the top 1%, fulfil that purpose? Worse still, the false claim appears to have been made to attract more students (i.e., money).
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