U of A on the cusp of the world's top 100 universities

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by Michael Brown

According to these latest rankings, the U of A sits on the cusp of the world's top 100 universities, slipping slightly to 108 from a placing of 106 of 503 universities worldwide. Out of the 180 North American universities, the U of A held its spot at 62. Bolstering the U of A's positioning was a 51 rank in the category related to science and social science articles published, and a 96 on nature and science articles. All told, the U of A scored a combined total of 23.25 per cent, less than 1.5 percentage points back of McMaster, which came in with a world ranking of 91 and was listed fourth in Canada.

Shanghai Jiao Tong University first compiled the list in 2003 as a way to gauge how close Chinese universities were to universities in the rest of the world, especially by way of academic and research performance. The quantitative measures the rankings use include criteria like the number of Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals faculty and staff win; the amount of articles indexed in major citation indices, and the per capita academic performance of an institution.

While important in determining the excellence of the research conducted by faculty at an institution, U of A President Indira Samarasekera says the factors that go into the creation of rankings and, thus, the rankings themselves, don't tell the entire story.

"The Shanghai Jiao Tong University rankings, like other university world rankings, only give a partial measure of a school's performance," said Samarasekera. "Although these rankings can impact a school's reputation, they give a limited overview of our performance and are only one component of benchmarks we consider."

The Times Higher Education-QS World University Rankings recently saw the U of A move up an impressive 15 positions, from 74 in 2008 to 59 this year.

The SCImago Institutions Rankings, released on Oct. 5 and which analyze the recent research publication performance of 2,080 global research institutions and organizations, placed the U of A at 49 among the world's institutions for higher learning and 65 overall.

Research Infosource, Canada's leading provider of research intelligence for business and higher education, recently announced the U of A placed second in Canada for total research funding, upping last year's total by $30.3 million to $491.7 million. This surge helped close the gap on the front-running U of T, which lost ground in total research funding, slipping nearly $10 million to $844.9 million.

In addition, the U of A was recently named a top provincial employer as part of Mediacorp Canada's 2010 Alberta's Top 100 Employers competition, and was given a bump to a nation-leading B-plus from the B grade the university scored last year in the recent 2010 College Sustainability Report Card.

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