Why McMaster in Hamilton is ranked among top 100 universities globally, once again

McMaster University in Hamilton continues to be one of the top universities in the world, thanks to its influence in research circles, support of innovation, and international outlook.

The 2023 Times Higher Education World University Rankings rank McMaster as the 85th-best university in the world, and fourth-best in Canada. Mac has been been in the top 100 in 12 of the last 13 years, earning rankings ranging from No. 69 to No. 113.

Times Higher Education (THE) analyzes nearly 1,800 universities across 104 countries and regions to compile what it claims are the most diverse and largest ranking in the world. Their rankings are based on 13 performance indicators that measure a school’s performance across four areas: teaching, research, knowledge transfer and international outlook.

McMaster’s strongest score is 94.6 (out of 100) in the “Citations” category, which measures the average number of times a university’s published work is cited by scholars. Mac surpasses heavy-hitter higher learning spaces such as the University of Toronto (No. 18 overall), the University of Michigan (No. 23) and Georgia Tech (No. 38).

The second-highest grade that Mac received from the Times Higher Education was 89.9 for “Industry Income,” which was seven points higher than any other university in Canada.

As THE puts it, while the score counts only 2.5 per cent toward a university’s overall grade, it “suggests the extent to which businesses are willing to pay for research and a university’s ability to attract funding in the commercial marketplace —– useful indicators of institutional quality.”

That score McMaster received is in a league with two top-10 schools, MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, ranked No. 5 overall), Cal Tech (No. 6). The University of Alberta is the only other Canadian school to score above 80 in industry income.

The university’s third-best score was 84.7 for international outlook. Around 1-in-5 of McMaster’s over 26,000 full-time students hail from outside Canada. Times Higher Education comes up with the ranking by “calculat(ing) the proportion of a university’s total relevant publications that have at least one international co-author and reward(ing) higher volumes.”

That ranking is actually 13th-highest among Canadian universities.

Overall, No. 18-ranked U of T is the top Canadian university, followed by the University of British Columbia (No. 40) and McGill (No. 46). In addition to McMaster, Université de Montréal (No. 111), U of Alberta (No. 118) and uOttawa (tied for No. 137) are in the top 150.

The other weighted categories used to rank McMaster are research and teaching. The full ranking and an explanation of the methodology are available at timeshighereducation.com.