Times Higher Education (THE) has again recognized UMBC as one of the world’s top universities in its closely watched 2018 rankings, announced late Tuesday evening. This marks the sixth consecutive year UMBC has appeared on the prestigious international list.
THE describes its World University Rankings as the only university performance measure to assess research-intensive universities on a global scale “across all of their core missions: teaching, research, knowledge transfer and international outlook.”
The 2018 ranking includes 1,000 universities from 77 countries, representing the top five percent of higher education institutions worldwide (see methodology). The list’s top ranks are dominated by the United Kingdom, United States, and Switzerland, with several universities from Germany, the Netherlands, and China also ranked very highly. Of the 157 U.S. universities included in THE World University Rankings this year, three are in Maryland: UMBC, the University of Maryland, College Park, and Johns Hopkins University.
UMBC’s profile in THE lauds the university’s commitment to innovation and impact by noting, “UMBC has always stressed innovation and interdisciplinarity. It has never been afraid to pioneer new models of teaching and research, and new ways of contributing to the regional economy.”
This recognition mirrors UMBC’s recent ranking as the #7 Most Innovative university in the nation by U.S. News & World Report, which also named UMBC one of the country’s top universities for Strong Commitment to Undergraduate Education, alongside Princeton, Brown, and Yale.
Times Higher Education further recognized UMBC’s innovative approach to supporting student success by featuring the university in a special THE summit held in Washington D.C., in conjunction with the release of the new global rankings. The inaugural U.S. Student Success Forum brought together influential higher education voices from around the world, including UMBC President Freeman Hrabowski and leaders from UC Berkeley, McMaster University, Columbia, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, and Microsoft.
In addition to producing annual global university rankings, Times Higher Education now also partners with The Wall Street Journal to produce national college rankings for the United States, across the categories of resources, engagement, outcomes, and environment, and based on a survey of more than 200,000 current university students. The WSJ/THE list for 2018 features UMBC as one of the top universities in the U.S., particularly recognizing UMBC’s diverse and inclusive educational community.
Both the U.S. and international lists continue to be valuable resources for prospective students and their families, in the U.S. and abroad, as they explore higher education possibilities.
Photo: UMBC students walk across campus in fall 2017. Photo by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC.
Tags: International Stories, Rankings, ROI
