UWI climbs in global university rankings

The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies has risen in the Times High­er Ed­u­ca­tion World Uni­ver­si­ty Rank­ings 2026, plac­ing it among the top 3.6 per cent of high­er ed­u­ca­tion in­sti­tu­tions world­wide.

Ac­cord­ing to re­lease by The UWI Re­gion­al Head­quar­ters on Thurs­day that, of more than 33,000 uni­ver­si­ties and high­er de­gree-grant­i­ng in­sti­tu­tions glob­al­ly, on­ly 2,191 from 115 coun­tries qual­i­fied for rank­ing in the 2025 year-end as­sess­ment.

The Times High­er Ed­u­ca­tion rank­ings mea­sure per­for­mance across teach­ing, re­search, knowl­edge trans­fer and in­ter­na­tion­al out­look. The re­lease said The UWI con­tin­ues to im­prove its rel­a­tive po­si­tion as the num­ber of ranked uni­ver­si­ties in­creas­es each year.

Vice-Chan­cel­lor Pro­fes­sor Sir Hi­lary Beck­les said the in­sti­tu­tion’s progress re­flects ad­her­ence to its long-term strat­e­gy.

“We con­tin­ue to ad­here stead­fast­ly to our strate­gic plan, which has proven to be an ex­pert guide that keeps us fo­cused on build­ing out our in­tel­lec­tu­al pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, scholas­tic brand, and glob­al part­ner­ship pro­file. The re­sults mere­ly in­di­cate the out­put of our con­sid­er­able col­lec­tive in­put,” Beck­les said.

The re­lease said im­prove­ments in re­search qual­i­ty over the past year led to in­creased recog­ni­tion and im­pact of aca­d­e­m­ic pub­li­ca­tions and pre­sen­ta­tions. It added that The UWI al­so record­ed gains in its in­ter­na­tion­al out­look, mea­sured through schol­ar­ly im­pact, glob­al part­ner­ships and par­tic­i­pa­tion in elite in­tel­lec­tu­al net­works.

Ac­cord­ing to the re­lease, the Uni­ver­si­ty’s work in ar­eas in­clud­ing cli­mate change, pub­lic health, arts and cul­ture, eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment and so­cial jus­tice con­tributed to its im­proved stand­ing.

“I am very proud of this in­ter-gen­er­a­tional achieve­ment, as we look to The UWI’s cen­te­nary in 2048,” Beck­les said.