U of A maintains strong showing in latest QS global university rankings
According to the 2024 QS World University Rankings, the University of Alberta maintained its competitive position among the world’s top post-secondary institutions, supported by improvements in key indicators of the quality, quantity and impact of its research.
In the 2024 QS Rankings, which evaluated nearly 3,000 universities and ranked the top 1,500 universities in 104 locations worldwide, U of A was ranked 111th globally and fourth in Canada.
“Our entire U of A community shares the achievement of being recognized for excellence in research and teaching by one of the most influential global rankings in the top 8 percent of the best universities in the world,” said U of A President Bill Flanagan.
“This achievement, along with other recent international rankings, reflects the strengths and contributions of our remarkable faculty, researchers and staff.”
The U of A’s highest-ranked indicator was in the International Research Networks category, where it ranked 68th globally. This new indicator measures the number and diversity of productive research partnerships with universities around the world.
Also in the category of academic reputation, which measures the quality and impact of research and accounts for 30 percent of the overall ranking, the university improved four places to 135th place worldwide.
In terms of citations per faculty, which accounts for one-fifth of the overall ranking, U of A rose 24 places to 213th globally. The U of A is home to some of the world’s most cited researchers in fields such as electrical and computer engineering, physics, bioinformatics and genetics.
The U of A also improved 19 places to 116th in the International Teacher Ratio Indicator, which measures institutions’ ability to attract international teachers to promote diversity in research and teaching.
Strong performance in the last rankings
Earlier this month, U of A ranked seventh globally in the Times Higher Education Impact Rankings, which measure the performance of post-secondary institutions in promoting the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals for 2030. Specifically, the U of A ranked first in Canada in three goals related to innovation, partnerships, and affordable and clean energy.
In the most recent subject rankings published by QS, 18 U of A subjects ranked in the top 100 internationally, with Nursing and Petroleum Engineering listed as the top majors in Canada.
Last year, U of A rose to fourth place in Canada in the US News Best Global Universities ranking, with 16 departments ranked in the world’s top 100.
The university’s excellence in gastroenterology and hepatology excelled in the US News ranking and ranked 33rd in the world, while agricultural sciences ranked 38th and food science and technology also ranked among the top 50 in the world.
The QS World University Rankings have been published since 2004 by QS Quacquarelli Symonds, a global university consulting firm. This year, QS considered nine criteria for the ranking: academic reputation (30 percent weighting), employer reputation (15), citations per faculty (20), faculty-student ratio (10), international faculty ratio (5), international student ratio ( 5), international research network (5), employment outcomes (5) and sustainability (5).
For this year’s ranking, QS analyzed 141.6 million citations and 17.5 million publications.