How do we go from 1st to 151st?

The Times Higher Education published their annual University ranking on October 1st. The renown list ranks the top 200 Universities each year. Harvard seems to continue to take the cake, followed by Cambridge, Yale and all the other prestigious schools you see in Hollywood movies. The real shock however, was The University of Western Ontario finishing 151st on the list. This apparently was an overall improvement from last years ranking of 159th.

Now, how can we (The University of Western Ontario) go from finishing first every year in the Globe & Mail and Maclean's Magazine to 151st in the world?

And I know you're probably saying "Well - 151st - We were still probably the 1st overall Canadian school in the rankings!"

And the answer is "no." We were beaten out by 9 other Canadian schools!

Unfortunately the Criteria for the ranking is not as detailed as the Maclean's/The Globe & Mail's annual review. I'm sure upon closer inspection there is good reason behind the differentiation in rankings.

I'm shocked though that such a respected listing would not publish more information behind their ranking. Furthermore, I don't know how they can get away with little to no explanation surrounding the ratings. Is it the case that the Times is such a revered publication that no one challenges these ratings? What about the grading here in Ontario? Both Toronto/Ontario-based publications have given top marks to Ontario universities in the past.

Of course the Maclean's ranking has been subject to criticism and scrutiny in the past for not properly grading universities.

But that's a whole other blog post.

Here's how the Canadian universities ranked:

18. McGill University
29. University of Toronto
40. University of British Columbia
59. University of Alberta
107. University of Montreal
113. University of Waterloo
118. Queen's University
143. McMaster University
149. University of Calgary
151. University of Western Ontario
196. Simon Fraser University

For the rest of the rankings check out:

http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/Rankings2009-Top200.html