More than 500 institutions from across the world have submitted data to Times Higher Education to participate in a new ranking focused on universities’ social and economic impact.

The THE University Impact Rankings, which is open to all accredited universities that teach undergraduates, are the first to measure global universities’ success in delivering the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The first edition of the ranking will include metrics based on 11 of the 17 SDGs. There will be an overall ranking of universities based on data on SDG 17 (revitalising global partnerships) plus the best three SDGs per university. Individual rankings of the universities that are best achieving the 11 SDGs will also be published. Universities can submit data on as many or as few of the SDGs as they wish.

Universities in Japan have been most engaged in the upcoming ranking, with 42 of the country’s institutions submitting data. Meanwhile, 30 US, 29 Russian and 26 UK universities have participated. Overall, institutions in 75 countries across six continents have taken part. The data collected from universities will be combined with data from Elsevier to produce the tables.

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Excluding the revitalising global partnerships goal, which is the only mandatory goal for inclusion in the overall table, SDG 4 on quality education has received the most submissions. Over 400 universities have submitted data and information on their lifelong learning measures and their proportion of first generation students.

Good health and well-being (SDG 3) is the second most popular, with more than 380 submissions. This includes metrics on the number of graduates in health professions and institutions’ overall impact on health, for example through collaborations with local or global health institutions or outreach programmes.

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The overall ranking, and individual SDG tables, will be launched at the in South Korea in April 2019.

Phil Baty, chief knowledge officer at THE, said that universities’ reaction to the THE University Impact Rankings has been “amazing” and the new tables “could change the way we see excellence in higher education”.

“This ranking will put all universities on a level playing field and rank them according to the impact they make on society, against their own unique missions,” he said.

“What’s really exciting is that we’ve seen prestigious research universities that perform well in the world rankings take part and we’ve seen institutions that have never before engaged in global rankings – particularly universities from developing countries that are not research-intensive – participate as well to demonstrate that they have an impact.”

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ellie.bothwell@timeshighereducation.com

The THE Innovation and Impact Summit will be held in partnership with the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) 2-4 April, 2019.