University rankings are designed to guide students, researchers and donors to find the most suitable university for their purposes among the approximately 17 000 universities in the world. The process of ranking is complex and there are differing opinions on what they actually measure and the different measurements take into account different aspects. The latest news on how Umeå University is doing can be found on this page.
Rankings that Umeå University monitors
The three ranking institutes Umeå University has chosen to take a closer look at are so-called aggregated rankings that are among the oldest, are among the most internationally known and are most recognised. You can find them below.
Times Higher Education
Times Higher Education conducts and publishes both Times Higher Education's World University Rankings (THE) and the Times Higher Education Impact Ranking, both of which are recognised as some of the most influential in the world. The rankings are based on extensive data collection from universities themselves, publications and other sources. Below are the results for the last few years and here is a link to THE's website where you can see for yourself, among other things, how the university ranks in the various Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Year 2025 - place 351-400: World University Rankings 2025
Year 2024 - place 201-300: Times Higher Education Impact Ranking 2024 Year 2024 - place 401-500: World University Rankings 2024
Year 2023 - place 301-400: Times Higher Education Impact Ranking 2023 year 2023 - place 401-500: World University Rankings 2023
Year 2022 - place 401-600: Times Higher Education Impact Ranking 2022 Year 2022 - place 351-400: World University Rankings 2022
QS World University Rankings
The QS World University Rankings are published by Quacquarelli Symonds (QS), a British company specialising in higher education. QS ranks around 1,500 universities from around the world and also provides additional rankings based on region and discipline.
The Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU), also known as the Shanghai Ranking, is published by Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China. The ranking uses six different indicators and is the only major one that includes the Nobel Prize and the Fields Medal as indicators. The ARWU takes little account of the size of universities, which means that large universities are favoured and the number of publications, for example, is not counted per teacher, although size is taken into account and reported in some indicators.
Several of our schools have their own rankings and assessments that they emphasise. For example, Umeå Institute of Design (UID) is usually ranked by Red Dot design, while Umeå School of Business, Economics and Statistics (USBE) is accredited by AACSB (Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business).
