I don't have much time to discuss this, but through some coincidence two separate but related news came to my attention today. First was an email sent out to all students on NUS's increase in the rankings, and another on Science News regarding the arbitrariness of these sorts of rankings.
In short, the second article reports on a research paper published on ArXiv.org, that universities' rankings will vary very much depending on the prioritisation of the metrics used in calculating their scores. The researchers did not study this particular Times ranking but another US one, though I see no technical difference between these two.
In any case, I've always thought that such rankings are very much rubbish. Seriously, each school or faculty within the university has different performances. Moreover, each individual has his/her own preferences: some may like a quiet environment, some work well with intense competition, some are just interested in the research work of a particular researcher. But then again, humans seem to prefer a clear numbered ranking than a matrix of rankings based on conditions...
Personally, I take a university and append a ±50 to the ranking.
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