SFU is now ranked number 26 in the world among 100 worldwide universities under 50 years old, according to the recently released 2013 Times Higher Education 100 Rankings.
The 26th spot marks a four spot jump from 2012, when SFU came in at number 30. The rankings for younger universities allow those institutions that aren’t as well established or known to be evaluated separately from their older cousins. According to the Times Higher Education website, the ranking “provides a glimpse into the future, showcasing not those institutions with centuries of history, but the rising stars which show great potential.”
On a national scale, SFU was the third highest ranked among Canadian universities under 50, with the University of Calgary at number 23 and the University of Victoria the highest ranked Canadian university at the 20th spot. The top ranked American university on the list the University of California, Irvine, in fifth place. First place was given to a South Korean institution, the Pohang University of Science and Technology.
Times Higher Education, a U.K. based ranking system, uses the same 13 performance indicators as the World University Rankings, with the methodology revamped to reflect the characteristics of the younger universities. Namely, the ranking for younger schools puts less weight on academic reputation and more to research volume, income, and reputation.
In the World University Rankings, the weighting given to the reputation of an institution is given a third of the university’s overall score, but the Times Higher Education has reduced that to just over a fifth, and given the largest chunks to research, citations (research influence), and teaching, all three at 30 per cent of the overall score.
The Peak spoke with Dr. Norbert Haunerland, SFU’s Association Vice-President of Research, about the significance of the shift in methodology.
“Increasingly, those rankings look at some objective indicators as well,” Haunerland explained. “Research funding is one thing, research output, number of papers . . . but particularly Times Higher Education started looking at what you do with your research, what impact you have, and one way to measure impact is how many people read your paper and cite them in other publications with citation analysis, and that counts a lot in Times Higher Education.”
Research is something that SFU does well. While a smaller institution and fairly young in the scheme of things — we’ll be celebrating our 50th birthday in 2015, the same year UBC turns 100 — Haunerland went on to say that SFU’s research and number of citations (the number of times an SFU publication is cited in another work) are impressive.
“We’re certainly on the right track,” Haunerland said. “I think over the last decade we tripled our research income and we are certainly doing well in terms of publication output and impact, like citations. Even in non-medical disciplines in terms of research dollars per faculty member, [we’re doing] better than some of the U15 universities.” The U15 is a group of the 15 leading research-intensive universities in Canada, headed by the University of Alberta, UBC, and the University of Calgary.
Haunerland speculated that SFU’s high impact and influence as an institution may be because of the university’s focus on working with the community. “We are among the Canadian universities who take a different approach towards knowledge translation, [putting knowledge into practice],” said Haunerland. “We work very intimately with industrial and community partners, much more than other universities. The engaged university is not only a university, it’s something we mean.”
