The University of British Columbia is the 51st best university in the world, according to the 2020 QS World University Rankings (QS).
This places UBC among the top five per cent of institutions in the highly-influential QS ranking, which considers over 1,000 institutions worldwide, including 26 from Canada.
As in previous years, private universities in the United States dominate the top spots in the rankings. But amongst public institutions, UBC is ranked 36th in the world and seventh in North America.
QS assesses universities using six performance indicators: academic reputation (40%), employer reputation (10%), student-to-faculty ratio (20%), research citations per faculty member (20%), proportion of international faculty (5%) and proportion of international students (5%).
“At just over 100 years old, UBC is comparatively young among global universities. To be cited as among the world’s best is a tremendous achievement to be celebrated by our entire community – students, faculty and staff,” said UBC president Santa Ono.
UBC also moved up one spot to 28th in the world in the research reputation category, based on over 94,000 survey responses from international academics. UBC’s global academic reputation is the highest ranked indicator for the university, reflecting the collective pursuits and achievements of more than 6,000 faculty at the university.
“UBC’s performance in this year’s QS rankings shows our university’s continued focus on significant and impactful research. It’s great to be recognized as as one of the very best institutions in the world by our peers,” said UBC Provost and Vice-President, Academic, Andrew Szeri.
Earlier this year, QS also ranked UBC among the top five universities in the world in three different subjects, including best in the world recognition for Library and Information Management, third overall for sports-related subjects and fifth overall for Geography. UBC had top 50 showings in 41 of 48 subjects tracked by the QS ranking.
UBC also ranks 52nd in the world based on employer reputation, and is recognized for graduating the best professionals based on the views of approximately 44,000 employers around world.
The QS University Rankings have been published since 2004 and are one of the world’s most popular sources of comparative data about university performance. Their Subject rankings tables were visited over 37 million times in 2018, and their overall rankings tables over 73 million times.