The University of Ottawa (U of O) took the largest tumble of any university in the world in this year’s QS World University Rankings, falling from 218th last year to 284th.
U of O fell from 11th to 13th compared with other Canadian universities. Carleton remained in the 501-550 cohort, and ranked as the 21st best Canadian school.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology was ranked the world’s best school, followed by Harvard University. McGill was the highest ranked Canadian university, at 24th.
While a noticeable decline, QS researcher Ben Sowter said U of O’s fall was as much a result of tweaked research parameters as the school’s academic performance.
“A substantial number of places were dropped as a result of a shift in our approach this year,” Sowter said. “We neutralized the historical advantage in favour of institutions with a strong emphasis on medicine in their research profile.”
Despite U of O and a number of other Canadian schools such as the University of Toronto dropping in the rankings, Sowter said Canada’s post-secondary institutions as a whole are quite strong.
“With eight institutions in the world’s top 200, Canada is joint-fifth in the world,” Sowter said. “That’s far above its standing in most measures of economic strength—such as GDP per capita—and the Canadian position has been gradually strengthening.”
QS creates annual rankings as a means to “provide prospective international students with a selection of tools they can use to guide their choice of institution,” according to its mission statement.
Second-year U of O student Kelly Firth said the rankings come as a surprise to her.
“I chose U of O because I specifically heard that the psychology program was very good, and that lots of graduates go on to get their PhDs,” Firth said. “It’s really disappointing, but I think it’s still a little early to make a real judgment call on the school’s academic trend.”
Sowter said U of O’s main advantages versus Carleton comes down to academic reputation and citations per faculty.
“Ottawa outperforms Carleton on all our measures with the exception of international students,” Sowter said.
Second-year Carleton journalism student Victoria Christie, said a school’s ranking should not be the main factor in choosing an institution.
“In choosing my program, its academic reputation was huge,” Christie said. “But I definitely put more stock into the individual program’s reputation than the overall institutional reputation.”
“With that being said, [U of O] already has an established reputation, and I think Carleton is still working toward building one,” she said. “You hear more about their law and med schools and such, whereas with Carleton you really just hear about one or two programs.”
