Paisley is moving up the rankings

Paisley’s university has climbed up the ladder in the prestigious Times Higher Education’s world university rankings.

The latest results saw the University of the West of Scotland climb into the top 501 to 600 category in the global ranking system.

This builds on the 601 to 800 category in last year’s rankings.

The results also saw the university jump four positions in the UK rankings to joint 60th out of a possible 93 institutions.

UWS principal and vicechancellor Professor Craig Mahoney said: “With Times Higher Education citing around 20,000 universities in the world overall, being ranked in the top 501- 600 of these is a considerable achievement for UWS.

“It is testament to the hard work and effort of colleagues across the institution, particularly with regard to the impact of our research activity and of our work in internationalisation.

“I’m immensely proud of what we have achieved; this is great news, especially when the scale and global weighting of the rankings are taken into account.”

The THE rankings claims they are “the only global performance tables that judge research- intensive universities across all their core missions: teaching, research, knowledge transfer and international outlook” to provide “… the most comprehensive and balanced comparisons, t rusted by students, academics, university leaders, industry and governments.”

THE uses 13 performance indicators across teaching (the learning environment); research ( volume, income and reputation); citations ( research influence); international outlook (staff, students and research); and industry income (knowledge transfer).

Dr Waiyin Hatton, chair of the university court, added: “This is truly fantastic news. Under the leadership of Professor Mahoney, together with the support of the court and his capable leadership team, there has been great progress made in positioning the university.

“The latest rankings reflect that hard work and dedication.”