The University of Malta (UM) is proud to be featured in several respected global university rankings. While these rankings should not be regarded as the sole measure of academic excellence, it is undeniable that, in today’s academic landscape, they carry significant importance—particularly for key stakeholders such as prospective students who place considerable value on them.
Currently, the Quality Support Unit (QSU) manages UM’s participation in these institutional rankings. The QSU collaborates with relevant UM offices to gather the required data, which is then carefully verified to ensure accuracy and integrity before submission by the respective deadlines.
While for certain rankings (THE, QS) the QSU actively collects and submits data, other rankings (CWUR, Webometrics) rely solely on externally sourced metrics, and UM does not provide any data input for these.
Below is a brief overview of the main rankings in which UM currently appears, including information on their methodologies and UM’s performance over the years.
The Times Higher Education (THE) World University Rankings (WUR) are one of the foremost global university rankings that evaluate research-intensive universities across all their core activities, employing 18 carefully-calibrated performance indicators to provide the most comprehensive and balanced comparisons. These indicators are grouped into five key areas:
Below are UM’s institutional ranking results over the years:
Beyond the institutional dimension THE also evaluates universities specifically across 11 distinct subject areas in its World University Rankings by Subject. This ranking employs a refined version of the overall World University Rankings methodology, utilising the same range of 18 performance indicators categorised under five core pillars for a comprehensive view of academic and research excellence. The methodology is carefully adjusted for each subject, ensuring fairness and accuracy by considering field-specific research cultures and publication practices.
The University of Malta is currently ranked in 10 out of the 11 subject areas – the latest results for the 2025 edition are available below:
The THE Interdisciplinary Science Rankings (ISR) is the first effort of its kind to measure universities’ contributions and commitment to interdisciplinary science. It includes 11 carefully calibrated performance indicators to assess institutions across three key areas, each representing a stage in the life cycle of research projects, namely:
UM secured a ranking in the inaugural 2025 edition of the ISR:
The QS World University Rankings now feature over 1,500 of the world’s top universities. In each ranking, a range of measurements is employed as part of the methodology, split into three broad groups: Lenses, Indicators and Metrics. The five main Lenses are comprised of the following Indicators:
UM’s performance if the QS Rankings over the years is provided below:
QS World University Rankings
QS World University Rankings: Europe
QS World University Rankings: Southern Europe
The Center for World University Rankings (CWUR) is a leading consulting organisation focused on educational and research outcomes headquartered in the United Arab Emirates. Starting from 2012, CWUR publishes a global academic ranking of universities without relying on data submissions by the latter. While it was first meant to feature the top 100 universities worldwide, it soon gained traction and was expanded to cater for the top 2,000 in 2019, which is when the UM first made the list. Since then, CWUR publishes its Global 2000 list annually.
CWUR uses seven objective and robust indicators grouped into four areas to rank the world’s universities:
The University of Malta’s rankings and scores by year are provided below:
The Ranking Web (Webometrics) has been published since 2004 to promote open access to the knowledge generated by universities. Contrary to what its name might suggest, it is not focused on ranking university websites, but rather the universities themselves. Web-based indicators are utilised as proxies to evaluate a university's overall global performance, taking into account its activities, outputs, relevance, and impact.
The ranking methodology combines webometric and bibliometric indicators, sourced from reputable platforms such as Majestic, Google Scholar, and Scopus. Therefore, unlike other university ranking exercises, the institutions do not submit any data themselves for consideration. Instead, the ranking is based entirely on externally sourced metrics, with the following indicator weightings:
UM’s performance in Webometrics overs the years is available below: