World’s Top Universities Announced for Impact on Sustainability
LONDON, Oct. 26, 2022 /PRNewswire/ — QS Quacquarelli Symonds, Global Higher Education Analysts, today published the first link edition. A new framework to assess how universities are taking action to address the world’s most pressing environmental and social problems.
QS evaluated more than 1,300 higher education institutions that met specific requirements1. Of these, 700 appear in this classification. The University of California, Berkeley is the world leader, having obtained the best scores in the environmental and social impact categories, each contributing 50% to the total score. It is followed by two Canadian institutions, the University of Toronto (2) and the University of British Columbia (3).
To develop the link concept and methodology, QS launched a broad consultation involving its 50-member Academic Advisory Council2: representatives from hundreds of universities around the world, thousands of students, and its Scopus/Elsevier data partners3 as well as Yale University.
The results place 25 Spanish institutions, three of them among the 100 best in the world. The University of Barcelona ranks highest in the country, ranking 21st worldwide.
The United States dominates the ranking, with 135 ranked universities (19.2% of the total), of which thirty are among the top 100, while the United Kingdom is the second most represented country, with 67 ranked universities (9.5% ), of which twenty are among the top 100. Germany is the third most represented country, with 39 universities, while Spain is the third most represented country in continental Europe, behind Germany and Italy.
Jessica Turner, CEO of QS, comments: “The development of vaccines against the Covid-19 virus is just one recent example of the impact made by universities cooperating to solve a global crisis. Universities are in a unique position to lead global efforts in enacting environmental and social change, whether through research, teaching, or community engagement.The goal of QS is to provide prospective students with independent information about the universities’ track record in improving of sustainability.”
“We also seek to support universities in monitoring and benchmarking their progress as they strive to put their ESG4 strategies into practice and find solutions to unprecedented global challenges.”
Highlights: Spain Barcelona is home to Spain’s top performers in the QS World University Rankings 2023: Sustainability, with Universitat de Barcelona(21) and Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona(55) beating their Madrid-based competitors. The Complutense University of Madrid(64) is the only other Spanish university that figures among the 100 best in the world.
The general classification of the universities that appear in the link is determined by the sum of their scores in two categories:
Spanish Universities: Performance by Indicator
The University of Barcelona is the national leader in 6/8 of the QS metrics, including:
The Complutense University of Madrid is the national leader in the Employment and Opportunities indicator, ranking 125th globally. This indicates an area of improvement for Spanish universities in terms of the employability of graduates.
The Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona is the best ranked Spanish university in Sustainable Research, indicating that it carries out high-impact research in areas aligned with the specific SDGs.
The latest UN Sustainable Development Report showed that global progress towards the SDGs has slowed for the second consecutive year6. However, the global higher education sector can play an important role in reversing this post-pandemic slowdown.
Dr Andrew MacFarlane, QS Ranking Director, said: “This ranking looks for indications that the university is committed to the society in which it exists and on which it depends, and is already making a difference. By highlighting the impact of its students, the alignment of its research with the UN SDGs, or its policies and governance, we hope that this ranking will serve to further intensify the efforts of universities to help overcome the global challenges that we all face. .”
The detailed link methodology is available here.
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