UOC in sixth group of Spain's best universities according to 'Times Higher Education' ranking

This is the sixth time the UOC has appeared in this prestigious list of the world's best universities produced each year by Times Higher Education (THE). The 2024 THE ranking places the UOC in the 601-800 bracket of the 1,904 institutions rated worldwide. This means that the UOC is among the 10 best universities in Spain. The THE World University Rankings is considered one of the most respected and transparent in the field of higher education, rivalled only by the Shanghai Academic Ranking of World Universities and the QS World University Rankings.

The UOC is ranked below only eight Spanish universities out of the 61 included on the global list: the University of Barcelona (in 152nd place), the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and Pompeu Fabra University (in the 201-250 bracket), the University of Navarre (301-350), the Autonomous University of Madrid (351-400) and the Complutense University of Madrid, the University of Granada, the Universitat Rovira i Virgili and the Universitat de València (501-600). The UOC is in the same bracket as six other universities, which are in the sixth ranked group on the list: the University of the Basque Country, the University of Cordoba, the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, the Universitat Politècnica de València, Ramon Llull University and the University of Santiago de Compostela.

The UOC is Spain's highest ranked online university. On the international list, it is ranked alongside the United Kingdom's Open University.

THE ranking focuses on five areas at each institution

The ranking looks at five areas in order to gauge the universities' level of higher education excellence: teaching, research environment, research quality, industry and international outlook.

The UOC obtained the following results: 18.4 for teaching, 18.2 for research environment, 75.9 for research quality, 29.7 for industry and 51 for international outlook.

The University of Oxford tops the rankings once again this year, followed by Stanford and MIT.

New this year are "changes to the methodology to present a comparison of research-intensive universities in the areas of teaching, research, knowledge transfer and international outlook, so that weighting is applied to establish the current and future indicators better", said Lídia Toda, an expert on rankings at the UOC. She added that the number of performance indicators has increased from 13 to 18, and "the name of these areas has been changed slightly: teaching (learning environment), research environment (volume, revenue and reputation), research quality (citation impact, research strength, research excellence and research influence), international outlook (staff, students and research), and industry (revenue and patents)".

Toda explained that universities' inclusion in the Times Higher Education ranking is free of charge, but they have to meet the following criteria for inclusion: they must offer bachelor's degrees, and have published at least 1,000 articles in five years, or 150 articles per year.