Research excellence propels UCL to global ’star’ status

UCL has joined a small handful of international higher education institutions which have been rated as global 'stars', according to new analysis of the World University Rankings by Times Higher Education (THE). The university already ranks as one of the top 20 institutions in the world rankings, but THE's new insight has identified that UCL is one of those which is 'on the move' due to its broadening research excellence and global reputation. THE's analysis examines 'academic' clusters' - which map institutions' research citation scores and reputation across 11 subject areas. For the first time, UCL has moved into the top 'old stars' category along with the likes of Harvard and Oxbridge. Meanwhile, UCL has also risen two places in the latest NTU world rankings from 10th place to 8th and is second in the UK after Oxford University. The NTU rankings offers annual performance rankings of universities around the world based on their production and impact of scientific papers. The analysis was carried out by THE as the nature of league tables means it can be difficult to discern meaningful progress from small fluctuations in universities moving one or two places year on year.