The University of Iceland is on the rise according to the new Times Higher Education (THE) World University Rankings, which were published last week. UI is now the top Icelandic university and has improved by 35 places since last year.
This is the 20th year the rankings have been published and the University of Iceland has been included since its centennial year in 2011. The THE Rankings and the Shanghai Ranking are two of the most respected global university performance tables, and UI is the only Icelandic university to be included in the latter. This year, UI was placed 601-700 in the Shanghai Ranking. UI is as well as the only Icelandic university to be included in the US News and World Report Best Colleges Rankings and the Leiden Ranking.
The new THE Rankings are based on an evaluation of around 1,900 universities in 108 different countries. The evaluation criteria have been updated since last year. Instead of 13, THE now look at 17 performance indicators in five areas: teaching, research, citations, international outlook and industry income.
The new performance indicators result in a more comprehensive analysis of the quality of research, taking into account not only the number of citations, but also the number of research publications in the top 10 per cent for field-weighted citation impact worldwide. The evaluation also considers how publications of UI articles are for the advancement and creation of global knowledge.
THE has placed the University of Iceland 501-600 this year; further calculations within this group show that the University's precise rank is 505. This is an improvement on last year's THE Rankings, which put UI at 540.
The University of Iceland has also performed very well in the THE subject rankings and the Global University Employability Rankings, published by THE. The University's most recent ranking for graduate employability was 161.
Furthermore, THE has concluded that UI stands out among Icelandic universities for impact. For the fourth consecutive year, the University of Iceland has been ranked among the world's top performing universities when assessed against indicators of global social and economic impact and advancement of the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
The new Times Higher Education World University Rankings can be found here.