Swansea University now appears among the top 300 elite institutions across the globe, with a ranking between 251-300 having climbed over a hundred places in the last three years. In addition, the ranking body has also ranked the University 35^th out of 93 top UK institutions, and the second highest ranked university in Wales. This also represents the University’s highest ever UK rank.

The Times Higher Education World Rankings assess institutions across a comprehensive set of thirteen indicators spanning key areas of higher education excellence: teaching, research, citations, industry income, and International outlook.

The University’s success has primarily been achieved due to continued impressive growth in research citations. This indicator measures the number of times research conducted at Swansea University is cited or used by other researchers across the world, helping to advance the global knowledge of any given subject. In the last three years, the University’s citation score has doubled, and the rank for this particular indicator has improved by over 140 places to 206^th in the world.

Another area of strength featured in the rankings is the University’s international outlook score. This assesses how international an institution is in terms of recruiting international students, attracting top international staff and collaborating on research with other top international universities. This score improved again from 75.8 to 79.9 and this indicator is now ranked 139^th in the world (up 21 places).

Professor Hilary Lappin-Scott, Senior Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research and Innovation and Strategic Development, welcomed the results: “We are delighted that the University has been recognised as a global top-300 institution for the very first time. This firmly places us among the very best institutions across the world and we are one of them. The last ten years have seen a dramatic period of transformation and growth for the University.

“Our research strength and quality improves year on year and building on our UK top 30 position in the Research Excellence Framework we continue to see our world-class research being used more and more by other academics across the world. This is why our citation score in this ranking has doubled in just three years and why staff and students from across the globe want to come to Swansea and be part of the success.

“This new high for the University is also a testament to the dedication and tireless effort of our academic and support staff and we should all be very proud of the success and recognition this has achieved”.

This latest achievement also confirms Swansea’s position as an aspiring and ambitious University currently riding on a wave of recent successes that have seen our reputation soar. We are comfortably a top-30 research intensive institution, coming 26th in the UK for research quality in the 2014 Research Excellence Framework. We have achieved five stars for quality in the QS Stars University rating system, and a silver rating in the UK’s Teaching Excellence Framework. In addition to being awarded the title of Welsh University of the Year 2017 by the Sunday Times League Table 2017, Swansea University has also recently climbed into the top 15 in the UK for graduate prospects, with nearly 83% of graduates in professional level employment or further study. 

View the full Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2017/ 2018 here.