Times Higher Education engagement report
@timeshighered - 290K followers on X
Measured over 40 original posts from a 30-day window, last computed on October 21, 2026.
Engagement
A typical post picks up 3 interactions against 290K followers, an engagement rate of 0.001%. Measured over 40 original posts, its engagement rate beats 6% of 21,185 tracked accounts of a similar size. That is a reason to look at how the audience behaves - reply depth, saves, whether the followers are recent - rather than a conclusion about it on its own. Posts are seen about 1.2K times each, and 0.259% of those impressions turn into an interaction. That is about 0.4% of the follower count, which is the gap between an audience on paper and an audience in a timeline. Posting runs at about 1.4 post a day over the last 30 days, though only 23% of days saw any activity at all. Most posts go out around 06:00 UTC, and Monday is the busiest day of the week. Of the 40 posts sampled, 20% carry an image or video and 100% link out. The account's strongest tracked post pulled 263 interactions, about 88x its own typical post. Recurring topics include #highered, #research, #teaching.
Measured over 40 original posts from a 30-day window, last computed on October 21, 2026. Recurring tags: #highered, #research, #teaching.
Compared with accounts its own size
Times Higher Education's engagement rate beats 6% of the tracked X accounts closest to it in follower count (21,185 accounts, accounts of similar size (decile 9 of 10)). A percentile is spread evenly by construction, so 50 really is the middle of that group and 90 really is its top tenth.
On engagement per impression rather than per follower it beats 15% of the same group. When those two numbers disagree, the gap is about how far its posts travel rather than how people react to them.
Where this sits in the catalog
At 0.001%, Times Higher Education sits below the 10th percentile of the 213,570 accounts in this comparison. That places it in the bottom 25% band, which runs below 0.025%.
Show the percentile table
| Percentile | Engagement rate |
|---|---|
| 10th percentile | 0.004% |
| 25th percentile | 0.025% |
| 50th percentile | 0.147% |
| 75th percentile | 0.699% |
| 90th percentile | 2.61% |
| 99th percentile | 82.9% |
This ruler is the whole measured catalog, not a size-matched group: it shows where the raw rate falls across every account we can measure, all of which are large. For a like-for-like comparison, read the size-band percentile above instead. See how the bands are built
Posting timing
This account posts most often around 06:00 UTC, and Monday is its busiest day of the week. The bars below are the catalog-wide pattern, with this account's own busiest slot marked. They do not show how this account performs at each hour: we keep one aggregate per account, not one per hour, so that measurement does not exist in our data.
Show engagement by hour posted, utc as a table
| Hour (UTC) | Vs author median | Posts |
|---|---|---|
| 00:00 UTC | -1% | 89K |
| 01:00 UTC | -2% | 90K |
| 02:00 UTC | -3% | 88K |
| 03:00 UTC | -4% | 94K |
| 04:00 UTC | -5% | 76K |
| 05:00 UTC | -4% | 75K |
| 06:00 UTC | -5% | 86K |
| 07:00 UTC | -5% | 93K |
| 08:00 UTC | -4% | 108K |
| 09:00 UTC | -4% | 124K |
| 10:00 UTC | -3% | 129K |
| 11:00 UTC | -3% | 141K |
| 12:00 UTC | -3% | 154K |
| 13:00 UTC | -3% | 167K |
| 14:00 UTC | -4% | 173K |
| 15:00 UTC | -2% | 176K |
| 16:00 UTC | -3% | 171K |
| 17:00 UTC | -3% | 159K |
| 18:00 UTC | -2% | 149K |
| 19:00 UTC | -2% | 141K |
| 20:00 UTC | -1% | 131K |
| 21:00 UTC | 0% | 116K |
| 22:00 UTC | -2% | 100K |
| 23:00 UTC | -1% | 90K |
Show engagement by day of week as a table
| Day | Vs author median | Posts |
|---|---|---|
| Sunday | +5% | 393K |
| Monday | +1% | 483K |
| Tuesday | -2% | 520K |
| Wednesday | -3% | 472K |
| Thursday | -2% | 430K |
| Friday | -3% | 447K |
| Saturday | +2% | 393K |
Formats this account uses
Its own posting mix on the left, and what each of those formats does across every account we track on the right. Only formats where the effect clears our publish test appear here, so an empty row is a format we could not measure rather than one that does nothing.
| Format | This account | Catalog effect | 95% interval | Accounts behind it |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Image or video | 20% of posts | +111% | +108% to +115% | 34K |
| Outbound link | 100% of posts | -41% | -42% to -40% | 32K |
| Typical length | - | no effect | -2% to -1% | 42K |
- 20% of this account's sampled posts carry an image or video. Across the catalog, posts with an image or video run 111% above the same accounts' other posts.
- 100% of its posts carry a link off X. Across the catalog, posts with an outbound link run 41% below the same accounts' other posts, so a large share of this account's output sits in the weakest bucket we measure.
- Its average post runs 221 characters, which falls in the 180 - 280 characters band. Across the catalog, posts of 180 to 280 characters match the same accounts' other posts almost exactly.
These are catalog-wide differences applied to this account's own posting mix, not a measurement of how each format performs for this account specifically. We keep one median per account, not one per format per account, so the second thing is not something this data can tell you.
Best tweets
- Oct 16, 202688x their median
Academics from Harvard University and UCL are among those joining an alternative independent review into the University of Cambridge’s appointment of sociologist Jason Arday https://t.co/4Skmv9r3tP
- Sep 5, 202642x their median
Wearable artificial intelligence has delivered a death blow to exams as we know them, an assessment expert has warned, amid mounting reports of students using smart glasses to cheat. @JohnRoss49 reports #highered #AI #cheating https://t.co/DbLXBfL9kW https://t.co/BqHtZwRrby
- Sep 2, 202636x their median
Andy Burnham has committed to saving the important Jodrell Bank telescope, following an outcry from scientists and the public over the decision to pull research funding for the site #highered #JodrellBank #research https://t.co/55Zsodnws6
- Sep 18, 202617x their median
An emerging trend of researchers not fully understanding their own AI-assisted research papers is a “serious problem” for academia, according to one journal editor https://t.co/K3mTbSp1Px
- Sep 2, 202616x their median
Scholarship ‘risks drifting away from excellence-based peer review and towards serving insider interests’ when cliques dominate, warns study. @jgro_the reports #highered #peerreview https://t.co/AsQjBosdAJ
- Sep 4, 202613x their median
A former chief prosecutor will examine the support provided to Jason Arday prior to the professor’s death, the University of Cambridge has said https://t.co/XYfo0TwEnz
- Sep 18, 202613x their median
Opinion: The sad affair of Jason Arday has exposed how the invocation of scholarly expertise to shut down public criticism of universities is increasingly untenable, says @drianpace #highered #expertise #accountability https://t.co/KZDUqRNkJJ
- Sep 18, 20268.0x their median
Russell Group chief executive Libby Hackett says top universities should charge more as scale of teaching deficit is revealed. @jgro_the reports [Link in comments] https://t.co/JACIwBfZf7
- Sep 16, 20268.0x their median
UK universities might need to move away from traditional degree provision to address the “nightmare scenario” facing them, according to former Ucas chief executive Mary Curnock Cook. https://t.co/AXCowUlv93
- Sep 16, 20267.0x their median
The accusations of critics that “woke waste” public research funding is “ideologically biased” should not be dismissed by universities as background noise, experts have warned #highered #woke #researchfunding https://t.co/t64xQIf2qo
Ranked by total interactions across everything we have tracked for this account, which is a longer history than the 30-day window the rates above use. The multiple compares each post to this account's own median.
Recurring topics
The most frequent hashtags in the sampled posts. They describe what this account writes about; they are not a performance signal, and the catalog-wide breakdown on the hub shows how little hashtag count moves.
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Reading these numbers
A typical post picks up 3 interactions against 290K followers, an engagement rate of 0.001%. Measured over 40 original posts, its engagement rate beats 6% of 21,185 tracked accounts of a similar size. That is a reason to look at how the audience behaves - reply depth, saves, whether the followers are recent - rather than a conclusion about it on its own. Posts are seen about 1.2K times each, and 0.259% of those impressions turn into an interaction. That is about 0.4% of the follower count, which is the gap between an audience on paper and an audience in a timeline. Posting runs at about 1.4 post a day over the last 30 days, though only 23% of days saw any activity at all. Most posts go out around 06:00 UTC, and Monday is the busiest day of the week. Of the 40 posts sampled, 20% carry an image or video and 100% link out. The account's strongest tracked post pulled 263 interactions, about 88x its own typical post. Recurring topics include #highered, #research, #teaching.
- What is Times Higher Education's engagement rate on X?
- Times Higher Education (@timeshighered) has an engagement rate of 0.001%, based on the median interactions across 40 original posts from the last 30 days against 289,717 followers. Replies, reposts and quote-posts of other people are excluded from that sample.
- Is that a good engagement rate?
- At 0.001%, Times Higher Education sits below the 10th percentile of the 213,570 accounts in this comparison. Those comparison accounts are all large ones, because our scanning cadence is weighted towards big accounts, so this is a ranking among peers of similar scale rather than a ranking across X.
- Does @timeshighered have real engagement?
- Its engagement rate beats 6% of the tracked X accounts closest to it in follower count (21,185 accounts), which puts it in the bottom 10% for its size group. Ranking inside a size band matters because engagement rate falls as accounts grow, so a raw rate would mostly re-measure the follower count. It is a starting point for a look at follower quality, not a verdict on it.
- When does @timeshighered post?
- Most posts go out around 06:00 UTC, and Monday is its busiest day, at roughly 1.37 posts per day across the measured window.