The University of the West Indies continues to show its dominance as a premier university after again ranking among the world’s top institutions, by The Times Higher Education (THE) World University Rankings for the fifth consecutive year.

Newly released rankings as of September 2, 2021, for the year 2022, recognize the UWI as ranked in the top 1.5 per cent of the best and finest universities worldwide.

The new ranking has cemented the achievement of Vice-Chancellor Professor Sir Hilary Beckles’s 2015 intention to globalise the university and to make it ready for regional and worldwide comparisons in THE’s rankings.

Addressing a virtual media conference on ‘The UWI’s Performance in the latest THE World University Ranking’, held earlier today (September 23), Sir Hilary stated, “We did set out in 2018 to achieve this objective. At that time we debuted in the top four per cent and we said we were going to push steadily, improve our management improve our research, improve the overall performance of the university regionally and globally and we were going to identify that top one per cent as our goal, representing the maximum performance in respect of excellence and this is where we have arrived.

“We are now ranked at the top 1.5 per cent of the best universities in the world.”

In addition to the improved ranking, the University has also maintained its position as the number one ranked university in the Caribbean region, and has added to its repertoire by ranking in the top one per cent of universities in Latin America.

Highlighting that the UWI’s latest ranking was achieved in a field of universities across 99 countries, Sir Hilary stated: “This puts the UWI in a position to declare its global excellence, as the statistical data now supports this position very clearly. It is not just a self-assessment of the UWI, it is an assessment of the world.”

Universities ranked on the Times Higher Education list are so done with four criteria in mind.

These criteria measure an institution’s performance across the areas of teaching, research, knowledge transfer and international outlook.

Given this criterion, the UWI was able to achieve the best ranking it has obtained yet, however, according to Sir Hilary, “We (still) have a long way to go…and in two years time, we intend to rise even higher in this rank. 1.5 is excellent but 1.1, 1.0 even more magnificent and we are looking at that in respect of achieving that target by the time we have reached our 75th anniversary.”

The UWI is the only Caribbean-based tertiary institution to be listed on the Times Higher Education list.