QS Europe Ranking: KCL Ranks High in Reputation But Disappoints in Employment Outcomes

King’s College London was ranked tenth in the QS Europe 2024 rankings overall, but only came in at 64th on employment outcomes.

The ranking places King’s 7th on the national stage, behind Manchester, Edinburgh, Oxford, Cambridge, Imperial College London and UCL. However, King’s was able to guarantee a higher rating than neighbouring university LSE, finishing two spots above the Strand-based social sciences institution.

The ranking represents the first attempt by QS World University Rankings to exclusively focus on European universities, evaluating a grand total of 688 universities. It classifies higher education institutions according to their academic and employer reputation, research output, research network, student body, staff to student ratio and sustainability.

In sustainability, KCL finished only 60th out of 300 universities in Europe and was bettered by 25 universities in the UK. This comes despite the university failing to reduce emissions since 2019.

When it comes to academic reputation King’s scored an almost perfect score of 99.1/100, which paralleled its employer reputation score of 98.1/100

Following this trend, the institution managed a score of 90/100 in citations per paper and a score of 98/100 for its international research network.

When it comes to employment outcomes and faculty student ratio, however, the picture was not so bright.

King’s scored 80/100 in employment outcomes, compared to 94 at UCL and 100 at LSE, giving them the 64th spot across Europe and 11th spot in the UK. In the adequacy of their faculty-student ratio they scored 72.7/100, compared to 99.6 at UCL, putting them down at the 99th spot on the European level.

While this set of results represents a slight improvement from the QS World Rankings, where KCL finished 12th best out of European universities, students may be more preoccupied by the low placements in employment outcomes and faculty-student ratio the institution is experiencing.