@Parapraxes Still does not make RUR less reliable than ARWU which people seem to accept because it confirms their own biases. The same faults you find in RUR are present in ARWU. Ergo, if one thinks the ARWU is a reasonable ranking, it should consider RUR the same way. Either both are junk or both are okay.
The data is from Thompson Reuters, so there goes the errors in data that you implied at the end of your post, btw.
You don’t like “Academic Staff per Student” and “Academic Staff per Bachelors Degrees Awarded”? Why not? There are arguably two components of what constitutes good education - quality and quantity of service providers. Yet you like “reputation” survey rankings which are even more subjective.