St Andrews amongst world top 100

The University of St Andrews is one of the world’s top 100 universities, according to the international league table the QS World Rankings, published today (7 June 2018).

Scotland’s oldest university is ranked 97th in the 2019 guide to the world’s top 1011 universities, the 12th year in succession that St Andrews has been placed among the top 10% of global higher education institutions.

The QS World University Rankings claims to be the most extensive listing of its kind, taking into account a range of factors including academic reputation, research strengths, citations, reputation with graduate employers and international influence.

St Andrews has dropped five places on last year’s rank, but maintained its position inside the global top 100 despite continued, marked growth in competition from elsewhere in the UK and overseas.

In many cases St Andrews has maintained or improved its scores.

It’s now ranked 25th in the world as a beacon for international students, and among the top 75 in the world for international faculty.

St Andrews’ global research portfolio and the extent to which it influences and is cited by other researchers resulted in a leap of 39 places to 73rd in the world.

It also boosted its ranking for reputation amongst employers.

The QS Rankings 2019 show that most Scottish universities have dropped places, although Edinburgh and Glasgow showed modest improvements.

St Andrews Principal and Vice-Chancellor Professor Sally Mapstone said:

“It is encouraging to see these rankings recognise St Andrews’ particular strengths in the international nature of our community of students and staff, and the improvement in our citations score is indicative of the way the research we carry out here has a truly global impact.

“There are lessons for us all in the QS Rankings and the picture they paint not just of the UK higher education sector but our competitors and partners overseas. There appears to be clear evidence that countries which invest in higher education are effectively investing in the ability of their universities to compete on a world stage.

“It is a considerable achievement for a small country like Scotland to have four of its universities in the top 200 in the world, and I hope there can be a frank debate about how we can not only maintain that position but improve it, to do justice to the enormous potential in those who study, research and teach at all our universities.”

The QS World Rankings results follow a strong performance by the University  in the recently published Guardian Guide 2019, in which St Andrews was once again ranked the best university in Scotland and third in the UK behind Oxbridge.