Ranking of Universities in the English-speaking World (excluding England and the U.S.), 2020-21

This is a ranking of the top 25 universities in the English-speaking world — excluding England and the U.S. — ranked relative to each other by average world rank for the year 2020-2021. For the purposes of this list, the “English-speaking world excluding England and the U.S.” includes those countries which have a native English-speaking population comprising at least 51% of the total population excluding England and the U.S. (51% is an mostly arbitrary percentage that I picked because it seemed to me to be an intuitively reasonable cutoff — of course other valid definitions are entirely possible). For the the purposes of this ranking, the United Kingdom is considered as comprised of 4 distinct countries (of which England is excluded on the ranking). To be entirely clear, I’ll list all the countries considered here: Antigua and Barbuda, Australia, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Canada, Guyana, New Zealand, Northern Ireland, Republic of Ireland, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Scotland, Suriname, and Wales (percentage of native English speakers sourced here).

The ranking was created by using metadata sourced from the four prominent rankings of world universities (each ranking released in 2020): Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU), Quacquarelli Symonds (QS), Times Higher Education (THE), and U.S. News & World Report (USNWR).

Rank was checked on each list for every university in the English-speaking world excluding the England and U.S. ranked on each of the lists. Then for each university all its rank placements were averaged across lists to create the new list of average ranking for each university. The universities were then ranked according to their average ranking. The university with the highest average is thus ranked 1st, the one with the second highest average 2nd, and so on. 

Finally, the results were tabled, and are shown below (Table 1.). The leftmost column shows the final relative placement (relative placement based on average rank, i.e.), the “institution” column shows the institution ranked along with the flag of the country in which it is located, the next four rightward columns (ARWU, QS, THE, USNWR) show the rank for each given institution in each of those selected world rankings, and the rightmost column (“Average World Rank”) averages the four ranking lists’ rank placement for each university. 

Some observations —

• The original ranking which best predicts the summed average is ARWU.
• The original ranking which most poorly predicts the summed average is QS.
• The most represented country is Australia, with 11 universities appearing.

If anything appears to be in error, please email me at tuulifunctional@snmcgannon.com.

Rank	Institution	ARWU	QS	THE	USNWR	Average World Rank
1	University of Toronto 🇨🇦	23	25	18	17	20.75
2	University of Edinburgh 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿	42	20	30	30	30.5
3	University of Melbourne 🇦🇺	35	41	31	25	33
4	University of British Columbia 🇨🇦	38	45	34	31	37
5	University of Sydney 🇦🇺	74	40	51	27	48
6	University of Queensland 🇦🇺	54	46	62	36	49.5
7	McGill University 🇨🇦	78	31	40	51	50
8	Australian National University 🇦🇺	67	31	59	64	55.25
9	University of New South Wales 🇦🇺	74	44	67	51	59
10	Monash University 🇦🇺	85	55	64	48	63
11	University of Western Australia 🇦🇺	85	92	139	79	98.75
12	University of Glasgow 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿	151	77	92	86	101.5
13	McMaster University 🇨🇦	98	144	69	133	111
14	University of Adelaide 🇦🇺	151	106	118	73	112
15	University of Montreal 🇨🇦	151	118	73	140	120.5
16	University of Alberta 🇨🇦	101	119	131	138	122.25
17	University of Auckland 🇳🇿	201	81	147	125	138.5
18	Trinity College Dublin 🇮🇪	151	101	155	244	162.75
19	University of Technology Sydney 🇦🇺	201	133	160	162	164
20	Cardiff University 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿	151	159	191	168	167.25
21	University of Waterloo 🇨🇦	151	166	201	210	182
22	University of Ottawa 🇨🇦	151	279	145	192	191.75
23	University of Calgary 🇨🇦	151	246	200	174	192.75
24	Curtin University 🇦🇺	201	217	201	174	198.25
25	University of Wollongong 🇦🇺	201	196	201	214	203

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