UBC was just ranked 47th in the world of top universities, thanks in a big part to its reputation.
The annual rankings were released June 8 and placed the school third in Canada, behind McGill University and the University of Toronto; UBC often places in a similar spot as over the last decade it's bounced between 43 and 51 overall in the rankings from Quacquarelli Symonds (QS), a company specializing in analyzing higher education institutions.
The Vancouver university's reputation helped buoy its ranking, as it finished 25th in academic reputation and 30th in employer reputation; in both cases that was second in Canada; those two categories made up a large amount of the overall ranking. It also finished highest in Canada and 24th worldwide in the 'international research network' category.
It was hurt by its 'citations per faculty' which measures how often faculty are cited in academic papers.
The report made special note of the number of "interesting and highly specialized bachelor's degrees" including food market analysis along with First Nations and Indigenous studies.
UBC wasn't the only school from Metro Vancouver ranked. SFU finished 328th overall, its lowest ranking in over a decade. Low scores in the faculty-to-student ratio, academic reputation, and employer reputation were among the reasons for the school's drop.
Other B.C. universities that were part of the ranking were the University of Victoria (359), Vancouver Island University (1,001-1,200) and University of Northern B.C (1,201-1,400). Other B.C. universities like Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops and Capilano University in North Vancouver weren't ranked.
In all 31 Canadian post-secondary institutions were ranked out of almost 1,500 worldwide. Ontario saw 12 ranked and Quebec had six. B.C. followed with the five aforementioned schools. QS notes in a press release overall Canada saw a drop in rankings with struggles in research efforts.
"Canada has been steady, if somewhat stagnant for the past five years and this is exemplified in the back-and-forth we see in this year’s rankings when compared to last year," says QS vice president Ben Sowter. "However, its consistency is admirable and is often lost amid focus on the rise of nations like China and Malaysia or the decline of the United States in our rankings.”
The top five universities worldwide are all familiar names; MIT outside of Boston ranked first, followed by the University of Cambridge in England, California's Stanford University, the University of Oxford and Harvard University.
