On January 21, Times Higher Education released its global university rankings. Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador’s best performance came in the engineering program, where it ranked 6th out of 29 universities in Canada and top 200 globally.
According to its website, Times Higher Education says its mission “is to be the definitive source of data, insight, and expertise on higher education worldwide” and has had “[a] relationship of trust with universities spanning 50 years.”
The 2026 university rankings have Memorial tied for sixth in the country for engineering programs along with McMaster University, the University of Calgary, and Western University. The University of Toronto topped the ranking for Canadian universities and landed 25th globally.
A university or program’s placement is based on a score calculated by a combination of four categories: Teaching, Research Environment, Research Quality, Industry and International Outlook.
The MUN Engineering program was awarded 22.4 points in the “Teaching” category, up one point from 2025, far from University of Toronto’s first place score of 78.7 points however a decrease from its 2023 peak of 25.9. Per the methodology page of the Times Higher Education website, Teaching score is based on “teaching reputation, student-to-staff ratio, doctorate-to-bachelor ratio, doctorate-to-staff ratio, and institutional income.”
MUN was given 27.4 points in the category of Research Environment, down 0.2 points from last year’s peak. The number one ranked University of Toronto scored 81.8 points. Times Higher Education describes the methodology of the Research Environment category as based “on research reputation, income, and productivity.”
In the category of Research Quality, Memorial University reached its peak score of 83.7 points, 2.7 points higher than the previous year’s (and peak of) 81 points. Not far off from the number one ranked University of Toronto’s score of 87.7 points. Research Quality is defined as “includes citation impact, research strength, research excellence, and influence”
The score of the Industry category, which is described as “measures income from industry partnerships and patents,” was very similar to Research Quality. 83.7 points, a new peak, and up one point from 2025 however, it’s a large increase from just 2 years prior when the category was given a score of 69.8.
And finally, Memorial’s highest scoring category was International Outlook, where it was given a score of 91.7, interestingly higher than the University of Toronto’s score of 89 but lower than the number two ranked University of British Columbia at 92.2 and the number 13 ranked University of New Brunswick at 93.4. International Outlook is stated to “[account] for international students, staff and co-authorship.”
The Muse reached out to Memorial University spokesperson for a reaction to these rankings but they did not respond in time.
