Prospective students should be cautious about putting their faith in university rankings as the basis for choosing where to study and be particularly alert to big rises in ranking placements, a global expert warns.

Richard Holmes, who has run the University Ranking Watch blog since 2006, says Australian universities are overly fascinated by rankings, sometimes to the point of an “unhealthy obsession”, and that big volatility in the recent Times Higher Education (THE) world rankings raises more questions than there are answers.