With QS Latin America University Rankings now discontinued, the QS Latin America and Caribbean Region Ranking, like the other regional rankings, follows the World University Ranking in the publication cycle. The research data and survey data used for the World University Ranking is used again, in conjunction with the other indicators, to form this ranking.

 The following eight performance indicators are used to evaluate academic excellence, performance and reputation:

Academic Reputation (30%) – measures an institution’s research, academic partnership approach, strategic impact, innovative educational practices, and impact on education and society at large. 

Employer Reputation (20%) – a key metric that evaluates the success of a student’s career development after completing their education. 

Faculty-Student Ratio (10%) – a proxy metric for the learning environment of the institution is calculated by dividing the faculty figure by the student’s figure validated by QS.   

Staff with PhD Ratio (10%) – the percentage of faculty with PhDs in relation to the total faculty number by using this indicator. 

Citations per Paper (10%) – provides an indication of the impact and quality of its research. 

International Research Network (10%) – assesses global engagement, specifically how institutions create and sustain research partnerships. 

Papers per Faculty (5%) – evaluates institutions for the productivity of their researchers. 

Web Impact (5%) – institutions are ranked based on their online footprint. 

Inclusion criteria for any new entrants to the regional rankings are: research threshold (50 or more papers must be documented in our Scopus extract over our 5 year window) and reputation threshold (an institution should be nominated in QS Academic Reputation Survey).

Along with the global QS Latin America & The Caribbean University Rankings, QS publishes 3 sub-regional derivative rankings as well: QS Latin America & The Caribbean University Rankings: The Caribbean, QS Latin America & The Caribbean University Rankings: Central America, and QS Latin America & The Caribbean University Rankings: South America. An overall rank in the global ranking is transformed into an overall rank in the corresponding sub-regional ranking, using same overall and indicator scores as the global ranking. Indicator ranks in the sub-regional rankings are not available.