Media Releases

Employability of U of T graduates first in Canada and 14 in the world

October 30, 2013

TORONTO, ON — A high pro­file sur­vey of the world’s uni­ver­si­ties that exam­ines the employ­a­bil­i­ty of their grad­u­ates places the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to first in Cana­da and 14th in the world.

The third annu­al Glob­al Employ­a­bil­i­ty Sur­vey, released Octo­ber 28, used inter­na­tion­al exec­u­tives and recruiters to cre­ate a pro­file of the ide­al uni­ver­si­ty grad­u­ate and the ide­al uni­ver­si­ty for pro­duc­ing such a poten­tial employ­ee. Designed by the French edu­ca­tion con­sult­ing firm, Emerg­ing, and exe­cut­ed by Tren­dence, a Ger­man mar­ket research com­pa­ny, the sur­vey exam­ined the respons­es of 2,700 recruiters in 20 coun­tries and polled 2,300 top exec­u­tives in 30 coun­tries before rank­ing 150 uni­ver­si­ties around the world.

“This rank­ing is a tes­ta­ment to the remark­able accom­plish­ments of the stu­dents who come to U of T from across Cana­da and around the world,” said Pro­fes­sor Cheryl Regehr, provost and vice-pres­i­dent of the Uni­ver­si­ty. “We know that our stu­dents per­form well when they leave the uni­ver­si­ty and enter the work­ing world. It’s good to see their hard work and cre­ativ­i­ty rec­og­nized by recruiters and employ­ers around the world.”

U of T, which had placed 24th on the sur­vey in 2012, climbed to 14th place, fol­lowed in Cana­da by McGill Uni­ver­si­ty at 30th place. Also in the top 100 are: UBC at 51st place, Uni­ver­si­ty of Mon­tre­al at 59th place and McMas­ter Uni­ver­si­ty at 73rd place.

In an inter­view with the New York Times, a spokesper­son for Emerg­ing said the sur­vey reflects the fact that recruiters now scout inter­na­tion­al­ly for employ­ees and increas­ing­ly rec­og­nize insti­tu­tions that focus on pro­duc­ing grad­u­ates with a broad set of skills.

“It’s a com­plete glob­al­iza­tion of the sys­tem,” said Lau­rent Dupasquier, asso­ciate direc­tor of Emerg­ing.

Ear­li­er this month, aca­d­e­m­ic rank­ings released by the Nation­al Tai­wan Uni­ver­si­ty (NTU) placed the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to eighth in the world and first in Cana­da for sci­en­tif­ic per­for­mance. The U of T and Uni­ver­si­ty of Oxford (ranked ninth) were the only non-Amer­i­can insti­tu­tions to place in the top 10 of the NTU rank­ings.

Those rank­ings were based on indi­ca­tors rep­re­sent­ing three dif­fer­ent cri­te­ria of sci­en­tif­ic per­for­mance — research pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, research impact and research excel­lence — and includ­ed a vari­ety of sci­en­tif­ic fields, includ­ing social sci­ences (ranked sev­enth in the world) and clin­i­cal med­i­cine (ranked fifth).

They fol­lowed on the heels of two oth­er high pro­file aca­d­e­m­ic rank­ings in which U of T also led the coun­try. The 2013 QS World Uni­ver­si­ty Rank­ing, released Sep­tem­ber 10th, ranked U of T 17th in the world and the Times High­er Edu­ca­tion World Uni­ver­si­ty Rank­ings, released Octo­ber 2nd, ranked U of T 20th in the world.

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