UVic Ranked Among World's Best Universities

The University of Victoria has climbed to 130th in the world and sixth place in Canada in the Times Higher Education’s annual World University Rankings released today. UVic was the top-ranked university in Canada without a medical school. There are nine Canadian universities in the top 200.

“This is tremendous news and it is very gratifying to see UVic taking its place among the world’s great universities,” says UVic President David Turpin. “This result reflects the hard work by our faculty, students, and staff in the classrooms, labs and throughout the university in the pursuit of excellence in education and research.”

“We would like to congratulate the University of Victoria for its performance in this year’s rigorous rankings,” says Ann Mroz, editor of the Times Higher Education (THE). “Being ranked 130 in the world top 200 is an impressive achievement. The top 200 universities in the world represent only a tiny fraction of world higher education and any institution that makes it into this table is truly world class.”

This year’s ranking constitutes a significant leap for UVic and reflects the incorporation of new methodology by Britain-based THE, with data provided by Thomson Reuters. The new methodology places less importance on the size and history of a university and gives more weight to hard measures of current excellence in all three core elements of a university’s mission—research, teaching and knowledge transfer. It is the only global ranking system that includes a section dedicated to the teaching and learning environment—including the first-ever global survey of institutions’ teaching reputation.

“All rankings contain a subjective element,” says Turpin, “but this international publication shifted its focus to the role of universities – and then to see UVic jump ahead in these rankings demonstrates UVic’s strengths. We’re one of Canada’s leading research universities whose work is recognized around the world. We emphasize and support inspired teaching and provide our students with a variety of learning experiences, including experiential learning. UVic invests in close partnerships with the public and private sectors to ensure that university knowledge is continually transmitted to and enriched by the wider community.”

THE world rankings first appeared in 2004. They are now regularly used by undergraduate and postgraduate students to help select degree courses, by academics to inform career decisions, by research teams to identify new collaborative partners and by university managers to benchmark their performance and set strategic priorities.

For more information and to view the rankings visit www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-university-rankings/
 

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