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Our Guest today is nunzio quelli founder of quarell Simmons which is a British company that specializes in education
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and study abroad nunzio thank you so much for joining us at knowledge at Wharton it's a pleasure uh you founded
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querly Simmons back in 1990 uh I wonder if you could tell us a little bit about uh what your objectives
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were at that time and how they've changed over time so I found a Qs W Warton student so maybe I can just give
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you a little bit of the the history because it's it's interesting absolutely
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uh I came to Wharton with the intention of becoming an entrepreneur and I spent my two years here uh really identifying
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um an opportunity and I I realized that I was passionate about education and there was an opportunity for me to
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produce Publications and provide information in the education space won provided me with some support the
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entrepreneurial center gave me a little office uh I had a great team of students
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they worked with me over the two-year period we won the moot courp business venture competition representing Wharton
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and and the business started here so um our our history is very embedded in warten and our mission from the outset
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really hasn't changed which is to enable motivated young people around the world
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to fulfill their potential through educational achievement International mobility and career development so those
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are three things that determine everything that Qs does and we are really passionate about it it
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sort of we touch the lives of of tens of millions of people around the world and
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it's a really nice feeling if you know that you're helping people make the
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right education choices that you're helping them progress in their career that's what we're about right so one of
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the again going back to the days when you first started Qs uh one of the biggest challenges for any new
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entrepreneur is uh raising Capital how did you go about that so I was lucky that
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I um identified a business which could be cash positive very early on and I was also lucky that I was at Wharton I had
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lots of students who were willing to help me and didn't require being paid so
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my Capital was essentially the free time that those students gave me and I did pay them eventually so once once the
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business started making a profit I actually gave a return of a profit to them but for the first two years I had
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probably a dozen Wharton students actually working with me excited about the project giving you know a
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significant chunk of their time and we managed to raise money from corporate Enterprises uh and some education
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institutions to fund the initial projects which were Publications I've been an editor of some magazines at
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Cambridge University and so that was my knowledge area initially so we produced Publications and they made a profit
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really from from the GetGo that was very helpful and and Qs has what what kind of
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publication as they so initially we published a a magazine called uh the NBA career guide which was about career
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opportunities for NBAs we then extended it to um a publication around diversity so it was looking at um the
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opportunities and development paths for minority students in the USA and we quickly extended to educational
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Publications looking at opportunities in business education and postgraduate education and that really was what the
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business did for the first couple of years years and then we quickly evolved well along with raising Capital the
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other big challenge for any new entrepreneur is picking a leadership team uh since you said you were working
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with a lot of students uh what what how did you recruit your leadership team what were some of the things you looked
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for so I'm I'm a very much a relationship driven person so I I look for people who I liked and who were
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friends and who were shared the passion about education and who were excited is about what I was doing so it was really
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about sharing the idea sharing the vision and saying do you want to help and you just whatever little bit of
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spare time you can give me will be appreciated and different people had different skill sets and it really
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gelled and in fact in the motore competition uh we took that initial student management team down to Austin
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Texas to to present our our business plan and it was great great camaraderie great fun um and yeah they they gave
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that time voluntarily it was it was lovely fantastic so uh during your entrepreneurial Journey uh what what
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have been some of the key Milestones uh and challenges and how did you deal with them so any
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entrepreneurial Journey has challenges and you I like to say that I'm not a Serial entrepreneur I'm a mono
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entrepreneur I founded one business and I've just grown it and the challenges
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have been to develop a business organically um self-funded so um managing and maintaining cash flow throughout that
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process whilst also developing new businesses so you know Qs today has uh we're a leading uh event publisher uh or
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the event organizer in the higher education space over 350 events and conferences we have the probably the
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largest um research organization specializing in higher education worldwide over 300 uh University clients
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we have web platforms that attract over 30 million unique visitors top universities.com and top mba.com and
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then we also have a a technology division which provides software as a service to the higher education industry
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each of those businesses has been funded organically through through our own cash
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flow and we've had to manage that um development very carefully so so cash is
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always the key issue in terms of Milestones I think that um in 1993 shortly after I graduated we
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decided to go into the events business and so achieving success in the events business was was pivotal in helping the
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business go from being a small idea to actually an idea with global scale and Global opportunity today as I said we
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organize 350 events and conferences in 57 countries what kind of events are the so uh we started in the NBA space
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naturally so um a principal event is is the world MBA tour we also Run the World grad
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school tour which is the largest source of internationally mobile postgraduate students we have the largest um educator
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to educator conference in the Asia region called Q Apple Qs Asia Pacific professional leaders and education
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conference we have the largest educ educator to educator conference in the Middle East called Qs Maple which Middle
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Eastern Africa professional lead in education and we're also we run a number
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of other conferences um for the for the education industry as well so it's both
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student Recruitment and professional networking for the education sector so so that as a milestone moving into V
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business was pivotal in giving us a global scale and scope then I think in 2002 I made the decision that I wanted
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Qs not just to be a media company but also an information and data company so I had a good friend who was uh John O
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lir who was the uh editor of of Times Higher Education and together we got together and said there's a need for
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Global rankings you University leaders are telling us that they have no basis for comparing their performance across
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borders so we spent two years with extensive Outreach to those University leaders identifying a suitable
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methodology and in 2004 we launched the C World un rankings and in the last decade that has emerged as the most
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popular the most viewed university ranking system in the world so over 100 million people will view the world
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University rankings around the world and I'm actually delighted to say that our
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2000 and 14 15 rankings have launched today congratulations uh if I could just ask a question about rankings uh there
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are so many different Publications that do rankings and some of them are actually uh the methodology is somewhat
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suspect U I wonder if uh you can explain what differentiates qss rankings from the
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those done by other Publications absolutely so I think Qs has invested enormous amount of time and
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mental effort in devising a system which is robust stable trustworthy and meaningful all those are key to the
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success of the Qs World un rankings so we spent two years outreaching to University leaders to identify suitable
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metrics for the rankings we have a system which is based on a global academic survey over 60,000
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academics responded to our 2014 survey we also have a global employer survey so over 30,000 33,000 employers around the
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world have responded to our Global employer survey largest employer survey that any organization in the world
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conducts that we're aware of we then look at bibliometric data in a lot of detail so the number of citations that
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University producing per faculty and then some other metrics which are important for world-class universities
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um student faculty ratio International faculty student international student ratios those metrics are meaningful so
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they're meaningful in the sense that universities have objectives to improve
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those metrics over time so if they can see that through Qs tracking they are making performance Improvement against
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those metrics that is a sign of successful so we estimate that over half of the world's top 500 universities actually
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reference Qs data in their strategic plans which I'm very proud of that it's
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an incredible fact so universities actively able to use our data to to manage the business of of their
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universities particularly as they orientate towards becoming more globally recognized and more internationally
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engaged so what are the outcomes of that first of all um the universities are much more actively engaged in
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international research collaboration so Qs rankings are not the the sole driver of that but they
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are a factor in in encouraging research collaboration and we see today that International research Partnerships
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produce twice for citations per faculty of soulless research activity for a university so that trend has brought
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about an incredible acceleration in the generation of quality knowledge which we're really proud of secondly because
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we look at the employer opinion students know that they can look at our rankings
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and get a perspective on what employers think about University education not just overall but we also produce tables
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for 30 different subject areas so for the Stu the prospective student audience it's really valuable to understand these
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institutions produce quality research they're also providing employability needs for different segments of
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employers that that's valuable output and that that has built not only the the
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trust but also the high involvement of the the education Community right now if you were to think about the almost uh 25
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years path that Qs has been on 25 years next year what would you consider the biggest leadership challenge you have
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faced how did you deal with it and what did you learn from it so there there have been numerous
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leadership challenges but I think that um what I have the biggest challenge has been to have the majority or all of the
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C staff follow the values that c holds dear and to to make sure that they are um really passionate about those values
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so some of our values um cultural sensitivity I've been preaching that since I founded the company in 1990 and
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in the early days people would look at me and say Nuno what are talking about what is cultural sensitivity but if you
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have the ambition to be a global company and you know you're operating in in
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China dealing with you know Chinese government officials one day you know a few days later you're you're in Latin
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America dealing with the Latin um mentality then you're off to Saudi Arabia meeting uh the Arabic culture you
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have to really invest time in learning about how people from different societies think and to to really
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appreciate how they think in order to develop a relationship and so I've tried
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to cultivate that mindset in in all the people at Qs and it's a challenge and
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but I think people gradually over time have have got it um we also have have a a focus on on um
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Innovation now Innovation is difficult how do you Champion Innovation you we've
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grown organically uh so we have to give people the time and the opportunity in the
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space to just think and nonproductive activities so you know we have projects which don't have short-term you know
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profit objectives and people who are focused just on on innovating our product site and you that you if I had
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lots of other shareholders who are banging the drum about you maximizing shareholder value and achieving
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maximized profits in the short term a lot of those Innovations may not come about so in a sense there's been a
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benefit to our our our structure in that we've been able to to reinvest um profits to to to Really push that
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Innovation and encourage it within the organization and then maintaining very customer focus is critical so um one of
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the things that I I really encourage us to do is to survey customers after every
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activity we undertake so now at all our events or any customer they have an electronic um digital app they can um
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download and they can give us immediate feedback and we monitor that feedback and we take that seriously there are
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other values as well but engaging my team with those values has been very challenging at times and I've learned
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that I have to invest a lot of my time in explaining why those values are important and making sure they followed
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through and the most difficult um value has been team playing why because you know Qs is a is a sales and marketing
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organization and naturally salespeople tend to be quite independent and competitive and
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competitive people so you what I've learned from that is that you have to create incentives that encourage team
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playing it doesn't just happen um as a matter of course you really have to work
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at it but it's important because it makes a big difference if you've got a
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constructive team playing environment you're going to thrive if you don't
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maintain that environment things start to unravel great I think that's a really
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good point uh N I wonder if we could shift Focus from your entrepreneurial journey in Qs into sort of the broader
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education Market in which it operates now one of the things that uh has been quite striking in the past few years is
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the extent to which uh disruption has started to rock uh the education Market especially things like muks or massive
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open online courses now if you think about some of these changes to what extent do you think they will they
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represent a fundamental disruption uh for uh the education institutions and to what extent are they just a complement
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to existing educational activities so it's a great question and I wish I had
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the answer I can give you my thoughts and in fact as you know I'm speaking on
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Thursday at the um SE Center for management studies Advisory board meeting at Wharton on the future of
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education so in effect this is my topic of discussion and I'm going to say that
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um I'm going to quote Donald rumfelt who you unwillingly but it seems appropriate
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you there are known knowns there are known unknowns and there are unknown unknowns some of the known knowns are
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you know the demand for education is is growing around the world especially in Emerging
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Markets the international mobility of students and academics is increasing even at an even faster rate
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the cost of higher education is is unsustainable for governments the rate of of enhancement
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of technology in e-learning is is accelerating those are drivers of change I won't go through the rest of
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the presentation there are there are lots of unknowns in that not least how technology will shape the future
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education but given those drivers of change I've I believe that disruption will come but
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as you rightly said I believe it will be complimentary rather than revolutionary
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why do I say that well you we've had educational institutions since the time
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of the Greek Agora where bright people have gathered together because frankly it's stimulating yeah as a collective
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group you you bounce ideas off each other you learn from each other Dean Russell Palmer when I was at Warton at
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my inaugural um talk said you're going to learn more from your fellow students
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over the next two years than you are from all our faculty all your lessons and he was right you you need that
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Gathering of bright people to stimulate and to to grow and to push forward knowledge and for that reason I think
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the university as an institution will sustain I don't believe in these um doomsday as uh views that that that that
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um the university will disappear secondly I I actually think that the the teacher student relationship and the
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delivery of knowledge by a human being is also sustainable it's actually relatively cheap depends on what you pay
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for the teacher but but you know at the basic level it's actually relatively
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cheap and remarkably well proven it stood the test of time I don't think that's going to go
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away I think that Blended learning is inevitably going to become part of the natural everyday process of delivery of
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Education you're going to integrate on online learning video um perhaps even um
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you know at the younger age groups um video cartoon interactive video uh game playing why because it's becoming
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cheaper to deliver as well it means that you can actually have the best people in
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a particular subject area feed into a lecture and make the contribution it also has the benefit
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that it can some of that learning can be done outside the classroom so that classroom time can be better spent on on
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productive interaction and engagement so I I think that's happening already I
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think it's going to accelerate I think the quality of that Blended learning is
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going to improve the quality of Engagement is going to uh improve then you start looking at more
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sort of um Advanced changes so I think that there may well be learner learner models where actually you have um
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probably in the moo environment where you actually have the Learners sharing knowledge and teaching each other and
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even rating and evaluating each other I think those models and those those sort of social models are are emerging and
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are likely to be popular I don't know if they'll ever be degree bearing and
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therefore I don't know if they'll ever substitute but I think they'll
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complement I think you're also going to have to have more evaluation of the quality of e-learning
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there's a great deal of e-learning already out there and a great variety of quality so I think there's a need for
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organizations like Qs to actually look at how you validate and uh potentially um rate those online learning programs
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we're looking at that um it's a process that we'll go through but it's it's a a
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non-trivial challenge and then finally I think that you'll probably probably
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see a return to more vocational studies delivered through online learning because we said higher education is very
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expensive the cost to the student is incredible the average debt for a four-year graduate student in the US
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today is $31,000 the total cost of that debt is over a trillion dollars it's more than
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credit card or Auto debt right there are going to be young people who are going to say I don't want that you know I I
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want to do a vocation and there are lower cost models where maybe I can work and study at the same time and I do
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think that within the developed economies like the US the UK maybe European Union that we'll see um a
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greater um Trend towards apprenticeships and Vocational learning through e-learning Platforms in emerging
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economies I actually think they're still at the stage where they want greater
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higher education Outreach and so I don't think that Trend will be replicated in
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emerging economies those are some of my thoughts uh now that's really fascinating and and given the fact that
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you have such a ringside view of educational institutions globally have you seen any promising pedagogical
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models emerge that you think will become more dominant over time so we are running a an award scheme and a
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conference uh at Wharton in December so I'm I'm honored that c is partnering
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with Warden to run the qar awards won cure star awards reimagine education and we have collected a pool of Judges from
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University presidents e-learning experts um the education specialist from Google
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Amazon um IBM to be part of that Community to look at the most Innovative and potentially effective new learning
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systems we have received um between 100 150 um applications from distinct uh universities and um private sector
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organizations we start the process of evaluation in a couple of weeks time so we haven't gone through that evaluation
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yet however I've I've started to look through some of them and I think that
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there is a a lot happening in in the area of gamification where U academics are developing uh game models to encourage
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um students to to go through different learning routes examples of that I can't
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because I can't name any of the entrance at this point in time but in at the
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awards we will be going through lots of CAS so the conference is the 8th to the 10th of December and all the shortlisted
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and winning entries will be showcased uh so it's an opportunity for anyone who's
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interested to to come and and find out about it but but gamification seems to be you know quite popular particularly
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in the in the University academic Community within the private sector there seem to be um just a lot of new
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models for engagement so it's e-learning online learning but just with enhanced
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engagement and you know enhanced Community creation and that's why I say the sort of learner learner model is
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probably around the corner because there's so much engagement and so many tools to to to manage engagement today
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that that I think it's it's inevitable so those are two things which which
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stand out but they're also you know interesting use of video so um I can't again I can't
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name an example but there's a a ballet school in in Russia that is using you
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know Real Time video realtime playback um real-time evaluation of videos um sort of digitized scoring to see if the
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body positions are in the right place exact to to then give the the ballerinas immediate feedback that's that's quite
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interesting use of video technology right right so lots of interesting things happening
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so uh to the degree that this these disruptive changes are going on uh what kind of threats do educational
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institutions face and which institutions do you believe will be the most vulnerable so as I said I'm I'm a
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Believer in the sustainability of the University as a as an Institutional concept I do think that there'll be and
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I think that the brand of the University still has enormous value for the employer and for the student and
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therefore you know the leading Brands will maintain preeminence I do think that there'll be greater volatility in
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the institutions which have brand recognition I think it'll be much quicker for an institution to achieve a
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claim and Status than you know the sort of 600 years it's Tak in Cambridge or
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the the 400 years that's taken in Harvard to to achieve that sort of preeminent position I'm not sure that
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new entrance will will achieve leadership but I think that new entrance can rise to problems quickly an example
00:26:04
is Hong Kong University of science technology which was only established um I think 20 years ago and it is already a
00:26:12
a a top 40 institution in the world and and the leading um university in the Asia Pacific region by by our metrics by
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Qs metrics so it's had a phenomenal rise to prominence and to prestige and as you
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have more technology in the e-learning system coming into play I think the ability for Innovative universities to
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really accelerate that brand reputation is there so a volatility will definitely
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happen so given everything you said I'm going to take you back to your roots at
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Qs and see uh what are the kind of new opportunities uh does everything you just describe create for Qs for the
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future so when you have disruption it does create opportunity uh I think that you know Qs as a trusted independent uh
00:27:05
source of information in the education world will certainly look to provide guidance on the different e-learning um
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platforms different e-learning programs that is a that is a requirement the market needs that and and we're beholden
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to to deliver that I think that uh as institutions look to evolve their strategies to to remain competitive or
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to increase their position in the global landscape they will look to Qs both for
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data and for strategic guidance on how to do that and you we have uh a Consulting team within our research um
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which is which is uh progressing very well so we're seeing that demand I also think that um more
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institutions will be internationally engaged so if they seek to internationalize then they will look to
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Qs to support that internationalization program whether it be through international student recruitment or
00:28:01
achieving greater uh brand recognition so those are those are obvious opportunities I think when we look
00:28:08
deeper we will we will reflect on on how technology is shaping the education space and we'll see if we feel there are
00:28:16
opportunities for our technology division to to be part of that but that's a that's a deeper uh discussion
00:28:24
so if you were to dream ahead five to 10 years uh what do you think Qs will look
00:28:31
like then so our vision is to be the leading media and information brand in the world you we compete with lots of
00:28:39
big names I think we're we're doing a good job of achieving that brand recognition I know that in China um
00:28:46
universities believe that if you if you want to sort of have an impact in China you need to align with Qs because Qs
00:28:52
rankings are the only thing that Chinese kids look at so I think to to continue to build our brand and its recognition
00:28:59
in markets all around the world I think the US is probably the market we're least well known in for a variety of
00:29:04
reasons I think that Qs can become much better known in the US have a much bigger impact in the US I think the US
00:29:11
education system is is absolutely outstanding it is the world leader but I think it's also a little
00:29:18
bit um stuck in a in a in its own path whether it be because of accreditation or other factors it hasn't evolved and I
00:29:27
think you know if I look at what Asian universities doing and the pace of change that they're undertaking and this
00:29:33
education industry is dynamic so I think that you if Qs can um engage more in supporting us institutions to to truly
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internationalize and change their focus that would be great so the vision for Qs
00:29:47
is is simply to be the leading media and information brand and to extend our footprint and I I hope that you know we
00:29:54
continue to to do a good job and that in 5 years time r Remain the most trusted uh independent source of information in
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the high education space that will be enough for me nunzio thanks so much for speaking with us my pleasure
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