In the last issue of this magazine I wrote about Queen’s global engagements, in particular about our need to enrol more international students, and observed in passing that no university can be great that does not deliberately cultivate its place in a global network of inquiry and discovery. If that is true, the last few months have brought some most encouraging news, as well as some challenges, for Queen’s.
At the start of June, in the influential QS World University Rankings 2025, the university rose to 193rd place – our first appearance in a decade in the top 200 out of more than 1,500 institutions ranked globally. And then, a week or two later, the Times Higher Education Impact Rankings were released with Queen’s in eighth place overall, uniquely among Canadian institutions in the top 10 for the fourth straight year, and first in the world for our work on United Nations Sustainable Development Goal #2 (Zero Hunger), third for work on #16 (Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions), and seventh for work on #11 (Sustainable Cities and Communities). A total of 2,152 universities from 125 countries were ranked, 26 per cent more than in 2023.
Amongst the criteria that shape these rankings, international connectedness plays an important role. In the QS Rankings, for example, global partnerships – between institutions as well as individual researchers – factor significantly, as do the numbers of international faculty and students, and meaningful measures taken to support that international presence. By requiring all institutions to submit evidence on Goal #17 (Partnerships for the Goals), the Impact Rankings similarly prioritize collaboration on a global as well as local scale.
Although no rankings take the full measure of any institution, there is reason to be encouraged by this year’s results. When it was approved a number of years ago, Queen’s Strategic Framework committed the university to maximizing its impact on society and on the world, offering an exceptional student experience, attracting and cultivating excellence and leadership, and pushing the boundaries of knowledge through research – all in service to an inclusive, diverse, and sustainable society. To the extent that recent news on the rankings seems to confirm we are making progress on that mission, there is definite cause for pride. And it is likely that success will beget more success: institutions around the world look for partners amongst universities ranked at the same or a higher stratum, and students similarly look to the rankings for guidance when making their decisions about international study.
For the last four years we have used the UN Sustainable Development Goals as a taxonomy within which to measure our impact as an institution, and the Goals – or whatever succeeds the 2030 Agenda – will continue in the future to help us conceptualize our relation to the world and to history. But this past academic year has literally brought home the complexity of that negotiation between the academy traditionally understood and the demands of the world. Conflict in the Middle East and elsewhere has impinged on campus life, affecting both the ways in which individuals in our community relate to each other and the expectations they have for the university. As a result, it has never been more important for Queen’s to understand and conduct itself in accordance with all the complexities of its global context, to recognize that – notwithstanding the myth of the ivory tower – institutions like ours are in fact never outside of history. Academic freedom, institutional autonomy, and global connectedness, like all the other attributes that define a university, are not to be taken for granted but instead struggled for amidst the currents and counter currents of world affairs.
