The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (The UWI) has emerged among the top 1.5 per cent elite uni­ver­si­ties in the world, ac­cord­ing to the lat­est rank­ing re­sults for 2022, in the Times High­er Ed­u­ca­tion (THE) rank­ing sys­tem.

Ac­cord­ing to an of­fi­cial state­ment is­sued by The UWI, it man­aged to im­prove its rank­ing over the pre­vi­ous year.

“The UWI has soared with­in the scales, mov­ing up a very im­pres­sive 94 places. From the glob­al field of some 30,000 uni­ver­si­ties and elite re­search in­sti­tutes, The UWI now stands in the top 1.5%, up from 3% in the pri­or year,” the re­lease stat­ed.

“In gen­er­al, these re­sults are par­tic­u­lar­ly sat­is­fy­ing to man­age­ment giv­en the head­winds faced by the uni­ver­si­ty in re­cent years, re­sult­ing from es­ca­lat­ing re­gion­al fis­cal chal­lenges, eco­nom­ic im­pact of hur­ri­canes, and fi­nan­cial dev­as­ta­tion caused by the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic,” it ob­served.

In 2016, The UWI man­age­ment took the strate­gic de­ci­sion to pre­pare and po­si­tion the in­sti­tu­tion for glob­al com­pet­i­tive rank­ings and en­gaged the Times High­er Ed­u­ca­tion (THE) rank­ing sys­tem, be­cause of its stand­ing as the most rep­utable and in­de­pen­dent­ly qual­i­ty as­sured. Its an­nu­al rank­ings have be­come a stan­dard mea­sur­ing tool in the com­par­a­tive per­for­mances of the best glob­al uni­ver­si­ties. 

Since then, The UWI’s per­for­mance re­sults have been steadi­ly pro­gres­sive.

“This is a spec­tac­u­lar per­for­mance,” Vice-Chan­cel­lor Pro­fes­sor Sir Hi­lary Beck­les not­ed.

“While we have main­tained our num­ber one po­si­tion in the Caribbean, and top 1% of the best in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean, the surge to the top 1.5% in the world gives us a con­sid­er­able de­gree of pro­fes­sion­al sat­is­fac­tion as a man­age­ment and lead­er­ship team,” Sir Hi­lary said.

“The top glob­al tier is where we set out to po­si­tion our uni­ver­si­ty and we have reached there,” he added.

Pro Vice-Chan­cel­lor for Strate­gic Plan­ning, and Prin­ci­pal of the Five Is­lands Cam­pus, Pro­fes­sor Den­sil A. Williams, has guid­ed the glob­al rank­ing en­gage­ment.

“The im­pres­sive per­for­mance of the uni­ver­si­ty is root­ed in the work of Fac­ul­ties and Re­search In­sti­tutes. Cam­pus prin­ci­pals and their lead­er­ship teams along with fac­ul­ty and staff should al­so be com­mend­ed for em­brac­ing the vi­sion em­bed­ded in the Triple A Strate­gic Plan which laid the foun­da­tion for this rank­ing en­gage­ment since 2018,” Pro­fes­sor Williams not­ed.

In the cur­rent World Uni­ver­si­ty rank­ings, on­ly 1,668 uni­ver­si­ties from 99 coun­tries sat­is­fied the el­i­gi­bil­i­ty cri­te­ria of the THE. This is up from 1,500 across 93 coun­tries last year. The UWI ris­ing is there­fore with­in the con­text of a sig­nif­i­cant­ly ex­pand­ed field of par­tic­i­pants, which makes the per­for­mance even more im­pres­sive.

These 1,668 elite uni­ver­si­ties are ranked un­der five pil­lars of ex­cel­lence: [1] teach­ing and learn­ing; [2] re­search; [3] schol­ar­ly and pro­fes­sion­al ci­ta­tions; [4] in­dus­try in­come; and [5] in­ter­na­tion­al out­look and par­tic­i­pa­tion. Re­sults are val­i­dat­ed by Price­wa­ter­house­C­oop­ers (PwC).

“The UWI’s ro­bust com­par­a­tive per­for­mance was dri­ven by im­proved re­sults in teach­ing and learn­ing, re­search and pro­fes­sion­al ci­ta­tions, and glob­al out­look and par­tic­i­pa­tion,” the uni­ver­si­ty’s re­lease re­port­ed.  “This re­sult places The UWI along­side the State Uni­ver­si­ty of New York (SUNY) at Al­bany. It al­so lo­cates The UWI in the elite band of BRICS uni­ver­si­ties in Brazil, Russ­ian Fed­er­a­tion, In­dia, Chi­na and South Africa with 3.2 bil­lion peo­ple com­pared to the 6.2 mil­lion in the Eng­lish-speak­ing Caribbean.”

It added: “Ar­eas of con­cern which are red flagged and iden­ti­fied for im­prove­ment re­main con­stant—in­suf­fi­cient pri­vate sec­tor in­vest­ment in re­search, and volatil­i­ty in gov­ern­ment fund­ing that rais­es ques­tions with re­spect to the en­ter­prise’s fi­nan­cial sus­tain­abil­i­ty. These ar­eas are placed at the cen­tre of strate­gic plan­ning for the next five-year pe­ri­od.”