The University of Toronto has been ranked the top university in Canada, 21st globally and third among North American public universities in the latest Times Higher Education World University Rankings.
The closely watched international ranking, released Wednesday, evaluated more than 1,900 research-intensive universities across the globe based on their performance in teaching, research, knowledge transfer and international outlook.
U of T – which placed 10th among public universities worldwide – was 15th overall in the research environment category, which reflects a university’s reputation for research excellence among its peers.
“The University of Toronto is recognized consistently on the global stage for its comprehensive excellence in teaching, research and impact,” U of T President Meric Gertler said.
“This latest ranking is a tremendous credit to our dynamic community of researchers, learners, teachers and innovators.”
The Times Higher Education ranking assesses five areas – teaching, research environment, research quality, research excellence and industry – and draws from data sources including surveys of scholars, bibliometric analyses of academic databases and information about a university’s population, income and partnerships with industry.
For the 20th edition of the ranking, Times Higher Education changed its methodology by expanding the number of performance indicators within the research category to include new metrics for research strength, research excellence and research influence, as well as adding an indicator for patents to the industry category.
There was some rearrangement among the top tier of universities compared to the 2023 ranking. U of T swapped spots with University of California, Los Angeles, which took 18th place, followed by National University of Singapore and Cornell University.
The top five universities in the ranking were: University of Oxford, Stanford University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard University and University of Cambridge.
Other Canadian schools in the top 200 included: University of British Columbia (41st), McGill University (49th), McMaster University (103rd), University of Alberta (109th), Université de Montréal (111th) University of Waterloo (158th) and University of Ottawa (177th).
The ranking was revealed at Times Higher Education’s World Academic Summit, which is being held in Sydney, Australia, this week. President Gertler spoke in a session on improving Indigenous access to higher education following U of T’s recently announced initiative to cover tuition for students from nine neighbouring First Nations.
Overall, U of T continues to be one of the world’s top-ranked public universities in the five most closely watched international rankings: U.S. News & World Report’s Best Global Universities, Times Higher Education’s World University Rankings, QS World University Rankings, ShanghaiRanking Consultancy’s Academic Ranking of World Universities, and National Taiwan University World University Rankings.