The Center for World University Rankings (CWUR) recently released a list of the top 1,000 universities across the globe.
Carleton University is currently ranked at 591, up two places from 2015 rankings, and a significant jump from 2014 when it was ranked at 627.
The University of Ottawa (U of O) is currently ranked at 193.
The CWUR began in 2012 by ranking the top 100 universities worldwide, and expanded to the top 1,000 universities in 2014, according to Nadim Mahassen, the president of the CWUR.
Mahassen said he began the CWUR due to what he perceived as a growing interest in knowing the global rankings of universities. While other international rankings have been published before, he said this is the first system not to rely on surveys or submissions of data from the universities themselves.
The CWUR uses eight objective means of evaluating rank, scoring schools out of 100.
The three biggest factors used to rank universities are the quality of education, determined by the number of alumni who have won international awards; alumni employment, measured by the amount of alumni who have held CEO positions at top companies; and the quality of faculty, calculated by the number of academics who have won international prizes.
Each of these categories is weighted at 25 per cent of a university’s overall score. In addition, the amount of publications, influence, citations, broad impact and patents a university has each counts for five per cent.
Carleton holds a a score of 44.72, while the U of O has a score of 47.72.
Mahassen said rankings are of interest to students, academics, and university administrations, as a higher ranking can potentially lead to a greater amount of applications from future students and more research grants for the institutions.
Canada’s top-ranked school is the University of Toronto, placing 30th with a score of 60.79. The highest ranked school overall is Harvard University, scoring 100.
