Uppsala University shines in QS rankings

“It’s pleasing that we have risen in the rankings, this plays an important role above all internationally for recruiting students, including doctoral students. QS is one of many rankings around, but it’s one we have chosen to monitor,” says Vice-Chancellor Anders Hagfeldt.

Uppsala University comes third in Sweden, after KTH Royal Institute of Technology (place 73) and Lund University (place 85). Over the past decade, the University has experienced a clearly negative trend in terms of its place in the QS World University Rankings, but in the 2024 edition launched on 27 June the University climbs from place 128 to 105.

At the same time the competition in the rankings has increased, as more and more universities are being ranked. This year’s result means that Uppsala University is now among the top 7 per cent of the 1,500 universities worldwide that have qualified for the QS world rankings.

“In percentage terms, this is the University’s best result since QS was introduced 20 years ago. The University’s relatively large improvement by 23 places is primarily due to QS revising its metrics to include three new indicators on which the University has scored well,” says Emma Östlund, Controller at Uppsala University.

Several new indicators
The new indicators, with Uppsala University’s results, are:

Sustainability – place 12
International Research Network – place 47
Employment Outcomes – place 105
In this year’s rankings, the weight given to some of the existing indicators has been adjusted. Academic Reputation has become slightly less important, Employer Reputation has become more important, while Faculty Student Ratio has been given less weight.

“For many years, the University’s overall place in the QS World University Rankings has generally been in line with its place in Academic Reputation, the metric that has most weight and the indicator on which Uppsala University has performed best in the past. Now the University has achieved higher places on the new indicators, which has improved our overall position,” Östlund notes.

Better outcome than in previous years
Uppsala University has performed better on most indicators compared with last year. The position in Citations, which measures scholarly impact, has improved slightly compared with last year, from place 314 to place 296. The University’s poorest outcomes are for the indicators Faculty Student Ratio (place 330) and Employer Reputation (place 320).

This year’s edition of the QS World University Rankings is the largest ever. It includes 1,499 institutions in 104 locations, including 8 in Sweden.

The indicators measured to compare different universities are Sustainability, International Research Network, Employment Outcomes, International Faculty, Academic Reputation, International Students, Citations, Employer Reputation and Faculty Student Ratio.

The list is headed by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the United States, University of Cambridge (UK) and University of Oxford (UK).