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Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2023

Published annually by the Times Higher Education (THE) magazine, the Times Higher Education World University Rankings is globally recognised and one of the go-to ranking providers for quality assessment of institutions all over the world.

Its ranking methodology is based on 13 calibrated performance indicators, categorised within five areas: Teaching (the learning environment), Research (volume, income and reputation), Citations (research influence), International Outlook (staff, students and research) and Industry Income (knowledge transfer).

Each indicator contributes a percentage towards an institution’s final score.

Teaching (30%)

Reputation survey: 15%
Staff-to-student ratio: 4.5%
Doctorate-to-bachelor’s ratio: 2.25%
Doctorates-awarded-to-academic-staff ratio: 6%
Institutional income: 2.25%

This performance indicator studies the perceived prestige of institutions in teaching, gleaned from the Academic Reputation Survey. It provides a sense of how much effort goes into nurturing the next generation of academics, with responses representative of the global academy’s statistical geographical and subject mix.

Research (30%)

Reputation survey: 18%
Research income: 6%
Research productivity: 6%

The research metric focuses on an institution’s reputation for research excellence, with responses taken from the Academic Reputation Survey. THE rankings also note that the research income is scaled against academic staff numbers and adjusted for purchasing-power parity (PPP). To quantify productivity, THE totals the number of publications within the Elsevier’s Scopus database, which provides a sense of how much high-quality research is published by the institution’s academics.

Citations (30%)

This indicator measures the influence of a university and contribution to the global stage in spreading new knowledge and ideas. THE calculates the average number of times an institution’s work is cited by scholars globally. This year, its bibliometric data supplier Elsevier examined more than 121 million citations to 15.5 million published works - including journal articles, article reviews, conference proceedings and books - over a span of five years.

International Outlook (7.5%)

Proportion of international students: 2.5%
Proportion of international staff: 2.5%
International collaboration: 2.5%

As leading universities now compete with their peers globally, THE measures this indicator to demonstrate an institution’s ability to attract students and faculty members from all over the world.

Industry Income (2.5%)

This indicator provides a sense of an institution’s ability to attract funding from commercial entities – how willing businesses are to pay for research. This comes from capturing data on how much research income a university earns from respective industries through “innovations, inventions and consultancy”.

Below, we’ve compiled the top universities in each destination - Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Ireland, the UK and the USA. If you’re keen to find out more about what it means to study abroad in any of these countries, fill in your details and make a free appointment with one of our friendly counsellors!

THE top 10 universities in Australia 2023

Rank	University	Global rank
1.	University of Melbourne	34
2.	Monash University	44
3.	The University of Queensland	53
4.	University of Sydney	54
5.	Australian National University	62
6.	UNSW Sydney	71
7.	University of Adelaide	88
8.	The University of Western Australia	131
9.	University of Technology Sydney	133
10.	Macquarie University	175

THE top universities in New Zealand 2023

Rank	University	Global rank
1.	University of Auckland	139
2.	Auckland University of Technology	251–300
3.	University of Otago	301–350
4.	Lincoln University	401–500
5.	Victoria University of Wellington	401–500
6.	University of Waikato	401–500
7.	University of Canterbury	601–800
8.	Massey University	601–800

THE top 10 universities in Canada 2023

Rank	University	Global rank
1.	University of Toronto	18
2.	University of British Columbia	40
3.	McGill University	46
4.	McMaster University	85
5.	University of Montreal	111
6.	University of Alberta	118
7.	University of Ottawa	137
8.	University of Calgary	201–250
9.	University of Waterloo	201–250
10.	Western University	201–250

THE top 10 universities in the UK 2023

Rank	University	Global rank
1.	University of Oxford	1
2.	University of Cambridge	3
3.	Imperial College London	10
4.	UCL	22
5.	University of Edinburgh	29
6.	King’s College London	35
7.	London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE)	37
8.	University of Manchester	54
9.	University of Bristol	76
10.	University of Glasgow	82

THE top universities in Ireland 2023

Rank	University	Global rank
1.	Trinity College Dublin	161
2.	RCSI University of Medicine and Health Sciences	201–250
3.	University College Dublin	201–250
4.	University of Galway (previously National University of Ireland Galway)	301–350
5.	University College Cork	301–350
6.	Dublin City University	401–500
7.	Maynooth University	401–500
8.	University of Limerick	601–800
9.	Technological University Dublin	1001–1200

THE top 10 universities in USA 2023

Rank	University	Global rank
1.	Harvard University	2
2.	Stanford University	3
3.	Massachusetts Institute of Technology	5
4.	California Institute of Technology	6
5.	Princeton University	7
6.	University of California, Berkeley	8
7.	Yale University	9
8.	Columbia University	11
9.	The University of Chicago	13
10.	University of Pennsylvania	14

If you’re ready to chase your goals, fill in your details and we’ll help you get to a top institution.

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