Are Global Rankings True Indicators of Universities Standing?

There has been a lot of conversations recently as to whether universiites global rankings are true indications of their standing. Universities that have been in existence for a long time seemed to be better ranked than newer universities and it seems that they are been favoured because of their past achievements and not neccessarily their present form. It is rather curious to note that when rankings of universities in the United Kingdom is published for UK universities, more "newer" universiities do much better in the rankings.

The question then is, why this discrepancy? Could it be the ranking of UK universities by Times, Daily Telegraph and Sunday Times are faulty? My reading of this, is that they tend to do a more thorough job and that their rankings actually reflect the true standing of the universities in the United Kingdom. It is time for global ranking agencies to begin factoring into their ranking matrix such things as student satisfaction levels, adaptablity to recent teaching methods in their ranking matrix. Hopefully, when this is done,we will begin to appreciate the tremendous improvements that have taken place in newer universities. Education is dynamic and always evolving and global universitis rankings should reflect this.