Students walk to class by climbing the steps near Woodburn Hall on the WVU campus in August 2017.
West Virginia University has been ranked among the top 1.5 percent of the universities in the world by the Center for World University Rankings, the largest academic ranking of its kind.
“This ranking shows that West Virginia University is known around the world as a leader in teaching and research,” said William Brustein, vice president for global strategy and international affairs. “Thanks to the great achievements of our students, faculty, staff and alumni we are being recognized as a leading global university.”
The center, based in the United Arab Emirates, evaluated 27,770 degree-granting institutions of higher education worldwide with the top 1,000 research-intensive institutions ranked. The rankings measure the quality of education and training of students as well as the prestige of the faculty members and the quality of their research without relying on surveys and university data submissions.
WVU ranked 410 worldwide and 134 in the United States.
“It is rewarding to see West Virginia University receiving the recognition it deserves both nationally and internationally,” President Gordon Gee said. “While I am not generally a fan of rankings, as many of them are not based on real metrics, this one is and that makes it doubly pleasing.”
The CWUR looks at:
• Quality of education, measured by the number of a university's alumni who have won major international awards, prizes, and medals relative to the university's size.
• Alumni employment, measured by the number of a university's alumni who have held CEO positions at the world's top companies relative to the university's size.
• Quality of faculty, measured by the number of academics who have won major international awards, prizes, and medals.
• Publications, measured by the number of research papers appearing in reputable journals.
• Influence, measured by the number of research papers appearing in highly-influential journals.
• Citations, measured by the number of highly-cited research papers.
• Broad Impact, measured by the university's h-index, a measure of both the productivity and citation impact of the publications of a scientist or scholar.
• Patents, measured by the number of international patent filings.
This is the second recent high ranking for WVU among international colleges and universities, as it was included on the Shanghai World Ranking of Top 500 universities.
“Being ranked in both the Shanghai Academic Ranking of World Universities and the Center for World University Rankings shows that WVU is an institution on the rise,” Brustein said.
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jb/10/16/17
CONTACT: John A. Bolt;
University Relations/Communications
304.293.6997; jabolt@mail.wvu.edu