Canada Home to Nine of the World’s Top 200 Universities

The thirteenth edition of the QS World University Rankings, compiled by global higher education analysts QS Quacquarelli Symonds, today confirms MIT Massachusetts Institute of Technology as the world’s best university for the fifth consecutive year. McGill University is again ranked Canada’s top institution, but falls six places to 30TH position. While several Canadian universities experience falls this year, the country increases its share of top 200 institutions to nine, one more than last year.

Other key findings for Canadian universities include:

  • 15 Canadian universities feature in the world’s top 400, the same number as last year;
  • Nine of these universities fall, four rise and two remaining static;
  • The University of Toronto rises two places to 32ND;
  • The University of British Colombia strengthens its position within the top fifty, rising five places to 45TH;
  • The University of Calgary breaks into the top 200, rising eight places to 196TH;
  • 24 of Canada’s 26 ranked universities see drops for academic reputation;
  • 16 of Canada’s 26 institutions rise for citations per faculty, QS’s measure of research impact.

QS World University Rankings 2016/17: Canada Top 10
2016 2015 Institution Name
  30   24 MCGILL UNIVERSITY
  32   34 UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO
  45   50 UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA
  94   96= UNIVERSITY OF ALBERTA
  126   115 UNIVERSITÉ DE MONTRÉAL
  149=   149= MCMASTER UNIVERSITY
  152=   152 UNIVERSITY OF WATERLOO
  196=   204= UNIVERSITY OF CALGARY
  198   192 WESTERN UNIVERSITY
  223=   206 QUEEN’S UNIVERSITY

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The University of Toronto is confirmed as the most highly regarded Canadian institution by international academics, featuring 15TH globally in the Academic Reputation indicator. It is followed by the University of British Columbia (27TH in this indicator) and McGill University (34TH).

British Columbia leads nationally in the Employer Reputation metric. It ranks 40 TH globally, having gained twelve positions. It is followed by McGill (51ST)  and Toronto (54TH).

Key facts and figures
•74,651 academics and 37,781 employers’ responses contributed towards the results, making both surveys the largest of their kind in the world.
•Over 3800 institutions were considered for inclusion this year and 916 ranked, 25 more than in 2015.
•10.3 million papers indexed by the the Scopus/Elsevier bibliometric database were analysed, and 66.3 million citations counted which amounted to 50.4 million citations once self-citations were excluded cities to feature per country.

The full QS World University Rankings for 2016/17 can be viewed here.

QS World University Rankings ®
The QS World University Rankings is an annual league table of the top universities in the world and is arguably the best-known and respected ranking of its kind. Compiled by the QS Intelligence Unit in close consultation with an international advisory board of leading academics, the QS World University Rankings ® is widely referenced by prospective and current students, university professionals and governments worldwide. The purpose of the rankings has been to recognize universities as the multi-faceted organisations they are and to provide a global comparison of their success against their notional mission of becoming or remaining world-class. The QS World University Rankings are based on four key pillars, research, teaching, employability and internationalisation and the methodology consists of six indicators: academic reputation (40%), employer reputation (10%), faculty student ratio (20%), citations per faculty (20%), international students (5%), and international faculty (5%).