The educational sector of the Catalan capital is in luck. Barcelona has three of the 200 best universities in the world, according to The World University Ranking, just published by The Times Higher Education. To compile this ranking, 2,325 academic centers from a total of 104 countries were analyzed, although the competition focused on 1,799 universities, which were those that met all the requirements to qualify.
The University of Barcelona (UB) occupies the 182nd position in the ranking of the best universities in the world, immediately followed by the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB), in position 183 and, a short distance away, the Pompeu Fabra University (UPF), appears at number 186. It so happens that these three public universities in Barcelona are the only ones in Spain that are part of the Top 200 of the world elite of higher education, led by ten British and American universities: Oxford, Harvard, Cambridge, Stanford, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), California Institute of Technology (CalTech), Princeton, Berkeley, Yale, and the Imperial College of London.
If we go down the table, in the 251 to 300 segment, we find the University of Navarra and, from there, we also find the Autonomous University of Madrid (from 300 to 350), Complutense University (from 400 to 500), Open University of Catalonia (UOC), Ramon Llull University, University of Valencia and University of Vic-Central University of Catalonia (from 500 to 600). Thus, Catalan academic centers account for 60% of the Spanish top 10 within this world ranking.
Between position 600 and 1,000 of the best universities in the world, we find other public and private Catalan universities, such as Rovira i Virgili University, University of Girona, International University of Catalonia (UIC), University of Lleida and Polytechnic University of Catalonia (UPC).
The Times Higher Education (THE) ranking is based on a series of thirteen indicators, which measure five specific areas: teaching, research, citations among academics, internationalization, and knowledge transfer. Each of these parameters contributes points to the overall evaluation, so there are universities that stand out more in one aspect than another. The University of Oxford is the one that obtains the highest total score, with 96.4 points, while the UB has achieved 55.7 points, the UAB 55.6, and the UPF 55.4.
In teaching, the Spanish classification is led by the UAB (35.21 points), the UB (33.1), and the UPF (32.6), while in research, the UB gets a higher score (43.4), followed by the UPF (39.4) and the UAB (38.8). The UPF is especially strong in citations (91.5), while the University of Navarra is ahead in the indicators of international focus (72.5) and obtaining private income for research (66.2).
"We remain once again among the top 200 universities in the world and among the leaders in Spain. Constant improvement is one of the main lines of work at UPF, and the rankings serve to see what we are doing well and what we can do better," said the rector of Pompeu Fabra, Oriol Amat, who attended the summit where this study was announced, held in New York.