How Canadian universities fare in a global ranking

The 2016-15 QS World University Rankings lists hundreds of post-secondary institutions around the world, ranking them based on grades for academic reputation, faculty citations, student-to-faculty ratios and other criteria.

The University of Toronto ranked 34th in a global ranking of the world’s top post secondary institutions, according to the QS World University Rankings.

The top Canadian university was McGill, which was 24th, while the University of British Columbia also made the top 50, in 50th spot.
Topping the list was the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, followed by Harvard, with the University of Cambridge and Stanford tied at third spot.

Rounding out the top 10 are Caltech, the University of Oxford, University College London, Imperial College London, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and the University of Chicago.

The listing began in 2004 and ranks 400 universities while assessing thousands around the globe.

Universities on the list were busy tweeting out their rankings. “We’re 156th . . . and 25th in the U.K.,” said a posting from University of Reading. Said one tweet, apparently official, from the University of Southampton, “We’ve risen 13 places to rank 82st in the 2015 (rankings).”

The most important factor in the rating system is academic reputation, which contributes to 40 per cent of the score.
For this grade, QS said almost 76,800 academics worldwide were surveyed on where they believe the best work is taking place inside their area of expertise.

Two categories which each accounted for 20 per cent of the grade were student-to-faculty ratio and citations per faculty.
Small class sizes and individual supervision were valued highest in student-to-faculty ratio while “citations” refers to how often pieces of works are cited in research papers.

Employer reputation accounted for 10 per cent of scores. For this number, employers were surveyed on which universities that employers think produce the top graduates.

The other factors considered were international faculty ratio and international student ratio.

Those categories were an attempt to assess if universities were successful in attracting top students and academics from around the world.

The top ten
1. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
2. Harvard University
3. University of Cambridge
4. Stanford University
5. California Institute of Technology
6. University of Oxford
7. University College London
8. Imperial College London
9. Swiss Federal Institute of Technology
10. University of Chicago

Canadian universities’ rankings
24. McGill University
34. University of Toronto
50. University of British Columbia
96. University of Alberta
115. Université de Montréal
149. McMaster University
152. University of Waterloo
192. Western University (University of Western Ontario)
204. University of Calgary
206. Queen’s University
225. Simon Fraser University
277. Dalhousie University
284. University of Ottawa
319. University of Victoria
324. Laval University

Rankings of Canadian universities outside the top 400 list, based on assessments:
411. Concordia University
431. Université de Québec
441. York University
451. University of Saskatchewan
471. University of Guelph
501. Carleton University
551. University of Manitoba
601. Memorial University of Newfoundland
Score tied with
601. Université de Sherbrooke
651. University of Windsor
701. Ryerson University