Media Releases

U of T Canada’s leading university in two major global rankings

September 16, 2010

TORONTO, ON – The Uni­ver­si­ty of Toronto’s strong aca­d­e­m­ic and research per­for­mance ranks among the best in the world – and is the best in Cana­da – in two pres­ti­gious inter­na­tion­al rank­ings released this week.

The Times High­er Edu­ca­tion Rank­ings rat­ed the Uni­ver­si­ty 17^th over­all in its rank­ings, while the High­er Edu­ca­tion Eval­u­a­tion and Accred­i­ta­tion Coun­cil of Tai­wan (HEEACT) ranked U of T 9^th over­all, up from 11^th last year. In both rank­ings, U of T leads all Cana­di­an uni­ver­si­ties.

Times High­er mea­sures the insti­tu­tion­al excel­lence of the world’s top 200 uni­ver­si­ties in research, teach­ing and knowl­edge trans­fer, while HEEACT mea­sures the research pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, impact and excel­lence of pub­lished sci­en­tif­ic papers of 500 uni­ver­si­ties around the world.

The Times High­er Edu­ca­tion Rank­ings intro­duced changes to its method­ol­o­gy this year, part­ner­ing with Thom­son Reuters, the world’s lead­ing research data spe­cial­ist, to pro­vide all the data and expert data analy­sis. Times High­er also intro­duced a new invi­ta­tion-only rep­u­ta­tion­al sur­vey of more than 13,000 ver­i­fied aca­d­e­mics.

There were three Cana­di­an uni­ver­si­ties in the top 50 in the THE’s new rank­ing, and nine in the top 200 world-wide.

“I’m grat­i­fied that U of T could be the flag-bear­er for Cana­da in this lat­est inter­na­tion­al com­par­i­son,” said Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to Pres­i­dent David Nay­lor.  “Cana­da has many excel­lent uni­ver­si­ties and I ful­ly expect to see more of them in the top 100 in the years to come.”

Times Higher’s new method­ol­o­gy places less empha­sis on rep­u­ta­tion and her­itage than in pre­vi­ous years and gives more weight to hard mea­sures of three core ele­ments of a university’s mis­sion — research, teach­ing and knowl­edge trans­fer. Times High­er is also the only glob­al rank­ing that includes a sec­tion ded­i­cat­ed to the teach­ing and learn­ing envi­ron­ment – includ­ing the first-ever glob­al sur­vey of insti­tu­tions’ teach­ing rep­u­ta­tion.

“The Times High­er Edu­ca­tion rank­ings first appeared in 2004,” says Nay­lor. “This year, they con­sult­ed wide­ly, brought in new part­ners such as Thom­son Reuters, and strength­ened their mea­sure­ment sys­tems.  One impor­tant inno­va­tion was a sur­vey of teach­ing and learn­ing envi­ron­ments.”

HEEACT’s method­ol­o­gy includes eight indi­ca­tors and rep­re­sents three dif­fer­ent cri­te­ria of sci­en­tif­ic per­for­mance: research pro­duc­tiv­i­ty; research impact; and research excel­lence. Six field- spe­cif­ic and ten sub­ject-spe­cif­ic rank­ings are also pro­vid­ed.

UofT’s fin­ish in the Times High­er and HEEACT rank­ings is com­pa­ra­ble to its per­for­mance in oth­er inter­na­tion­al rank­ings this year. Ear­li­er, the Shang­hai-based Aca­d­e­m­ic Rank­ing of World Uni­ver­si­ties had U of T 27^th glob­al­ly and first in Cana­da. QS ranked U of T 29^th glob­al­ly, sec­ond to McGill in Cana­da; but U of T led Cana­da in every sub­ject dis­ci­pline in the QS rep­u­ta­tion­al sur­vey.  As well, a new West­ern Aus­tralian rank­ing of High Impact Uni­ver­si­ties has just put Toron­to 14^th world-wide and first in Cana­da.

“There are rank­ings of many dif­fer­ent aspects of uni­ver­si­ty per­for­mance these days”, says Nay­lor.  “How­ev­er, in mea­sure­ment, con­sis­ten­cy counts. With these new results from the Times High­er and HEEACT, Toron­to has mea­sured up con­sis­tent­ly well. That’s due to our great fac­ul­ty, staff, and stu­dents, not to men­tion our out­stand­ing alum­ni and thou­sands of gen­er­ous sup­port­ers who have helped us in these tough eco­nom­ic times.”

For full results of the Times High­er Edu­ca­tion Rank­ings 2010, go to: http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-university-rankings/

For full results of the HEEACT Rank­ings 2010, go to:
http://ranking.heeact.edu.tw/en-us/2010/homepage/

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For more infor­ma­tion, please con­tact:

Lau­rie Stephens
Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to
416–978-2105