Categories: Lifestyle

Four BC schools made the list of the top research universities in Canada

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There are many, many ways to rank Canada’s colleges and universities, from on-campus culture to hiring rates of graduates. But, there’s no doubt that for those in academia, the access to (and results of) research play a major role in deciding where to go. So, it’s nice to know that more than a couple of schools out of BC made the list of the top research universities in Canada.

The ranking comes from Research Infosource, which is a research, consulting, and publishing firm. Their metrics to create the list were pretty straightforward, separated into ‘Sponsored Research Income’ and ‘Research Intensity’. Sponsored research income is how much the school received for research from external sources. Meanwhile, research intensity focuses on average funds available per faculty and graduate student. It should be noted that these figures reference 2020 numbers, the most recent available.

Using those figures, here are the schools in BC that landed among the top 50 research universities in Canada.

2. University of British Columbia- $652.6M
16. Simon Fraser University- $167.2M
20. University of Victoria- $124.9M
41. University of Northern British Columbia- $13.8M

And while this provides a general lay of the land, we do have to question the, uh, comprehensive nature of the rankings. First off, these rankings only reflect the financial side of research, and do not take into account more academic metrics, like research actually getting published in journals. Second, the emphasis on general funding overshadows the nuance of faculty funding- UBC might be second overall, but since there are so many faculties at the school, it drops to 10th in that metric.

Even still, it’s fun to see which Canadian universities are getting the big bucks to do research!