U of C continues to fall in global rankings survey

The University of Calgary has continued to slide in a prominent academic rating survey.

For the 2021 edition, it fell from 233rd spot in the global rating to 246 out of 1,002 schools in the QS World University Rankings.

It ended up with a total score of 37.8 out of 100.

That’s an almost constant slide since 2015 when the university reached 171 in those global sweepstakes.

According to QS, the U of C’s weakest criteria was its student faculty, which scored 27.2, while its greatest strength was in its international faculty, at 82.9 points.

“It’s not a fall reducible to a single issue — in fact, the University of Calgary’s fallen in all six of the indicators that we use to compile the rankings,” QS spokesman Jack Moran said in an email.

“It’s dropped 11 places for Academic Reputation, based on the insights of 102,000 academics worldwide about university quality. It’s dropped 19 places for Employer Reputation.”

The biggest blow came in the rise of the U of C’s class sizes, he said.

“There is a clear correlation between attainment and class sizes, and this metric serves as a means of providing a guide to average class sizes at universities.”

The university’s research performance dropped slightly — down 14 points — though its research output was still considered “very high.”

But the U of C remained among the top 10 among Canadian schools, securing the last spot in a tie with Queen’s University.

Alberta government budget cuts announced last October slashed post-secondary education spending by 6.3 per cent — a $26.7-million spending decrease — leading to job cuts and tuition increases.

“We anticipate that given the magnitude of this cut, this could lead to more positions being lost at the University of Calgary,” U of C president Ed Mccauley said last February.

“Student experience and impact are paramount at the University of Calgary.”

The University of Toronto, with an overall score of 82.7, managed to improve its global ranking from 29 to 25 and was the top-ranked Canadian school.

Falling from 113 to 119 was the University of Alberta, which was rated No. 5 among Canadian campuses and scored 54.

The highest-ranking university was the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a score of 100.