The University of New Mexico is ranked among the world’s top universities according to the latest Center for World University Rankings (CWUR) – the largest academic ranking of global universities.

In CWUR’s 2016 rankings, UNM is ranked No. 196 among 1,000 universities worldwide out of more than 25,000 institutions overall. When compared against U.S. institutions directly, UNM is ranked No. 82.

When compared to other notable U.S. universities, UNM ranked higher than many prestigious universities including University of Georgia (83), Iowa State (84), Kansas (85), Missouri (88), North Carolina State (89), George Washington University (86), Oregon State (97), University of Tennessee (96), Florida State University (98) and the University of Oklahoma (101).

UNM is also tops in the CWUR rankings among its rivals in the Mountain West conference. Colorado State is ranked at No. 107 among U.S. institutions and No. 282 worldwide.

“While rankings are never our primary concern, the CWUR ranking provides a positive snapshot of the University of New Mexico education,” said Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs Chaouki Abdallah.

CWUR’s methodology uses a percentage of eight objective and robust indicators to rank the world's top 1,000 universities. They include: quality of education, alumni employment, quality of faculty, publications, influence, citations, broad impacts and patents. Education, employment and faculty are the highest indicators in terms of percentage (25 percent each), while all other categories are five percent.

UNM’s top indicators came in the areas of citations and patents where it ranked No. 90 and 119 respectively. Other areas of note included influence (167) and broad impacts (170).

The categories utilized in CWUR’s methodology are measured in a number of different ways. For example, quality of education is measured by the number of a university's alumni who have won major international awards, prizes, and medals relative to the university's size.

Alumni employment is measured by the number of a university's alumni who have held CEO positions at the world's top companies relative to the university's size, while the quality of faculty is measured by the number of academics who have won major international awards, prizes, and medals.

In UNM’s two highest categories, citations are measured by the number of highly-cited research papers, while patents are measured by the number of international patent filings.

“The specific categories of highly-cited papers patents provide objective measures and illustrate the impact of our faculty research,” Abdallah said.

CWUR publishes the only global university ranking that measures the quality of education and training of students as well as the prestige of the faculty members and the quality of their research without relying on surveys and university data submissions.

The CWUR rankings started out as a project in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia in 2012 with the modest aim of ranking the top 100 global universities. The ranking was quickly reported worldwide and many requests were received to expand it, which it did in 2014.

For a complete ranking of the top-1000 universities worldwide, visit: CWUR 2016 – World University Rankings.