Methodologies

Times Higher Education World University Rankings

Cover Rankings

Times Higher Education (THE) publishes two rankings that matter for the University of Tunis El Manar (UTM): the World University Rankings, which score universities on teaching, research, international outlook and industry, and the Sustainability Impact Ratings (formerly the Impact Rankings), which score contributions to the SDGs. This note summarises both for staff who prepare ranking data.

World University Rankings 2027

The 2027 edition uses 17 performance indicators grouped into five pillars.

Pillars, indicators and weights of the THE World University Rankings 2027
Pillar (weight)Indicators and weights
Teaching (29.5%)Teaching reputation 15%; staff-to-student ratio 4.5%; doctorate-to-bachelor's ratio 2%; doctorates awarded per academic staff 5.5%; institutional income 2.5%
Research environment (29%)Research reputation 18%; research income 5.5%; research productivity 5.5%
Research quality (30%)Citation impact 15%; research strength 5%; research excellence 5%; research influence 5%
International outlook (7.5%)International students 2.5%; international staff 2.5%; international collaboration 2.5%
Industry (4%)Industry income 2%; patents 2%

Source: THE World University Rankings 2027 methodology. The Academic Reputation Survey used for this edition ran between November 2025 and February 2026.

UTM, as reported

  • THE lists UTM in the 801-1000 band of the 2027 edition.
  • La Presse (September 2026) reports that UTM remains the top-ranked Tunisian university, with an unchanged band since 2025 and higher scores on all five criteria, including 70.7 for industry and 46.5 for teaching.
  • Webdo (October 2026) reports that UTM is third in North Africa and first in Africa for the THE teaching indicator, and that eleven Tunisian institutions are in the 2027 edition.

Sustainability Impact Ratings 2026

The eighth edition, published in June 2026, ranks 1,646 institutions from 116 countries and territories. The main rules of the 2026 methodology (version 1.0) are:

  • Any university that teaches at undergraduate or postgraduate level can take part, with no minimum research requirement.
  • A university gets a score and a rank for each SDG for which it submits data. The overall table needs data on at least four SDGs, one of which must be SDG 17.
  • The annual score is SDG 17 (up to 22%) plus the three strongest other SDGs (up to 26% each). Scores are scaled to 0-100 before the three strongest are chosen, so they are not always the goals where the university is ranked highest. The 2026 overall score is the average of the 2025 and 2026 annual scores.
  • Research metrics use Scopus documents found by SDG keyword searches and machine learning, cover 2020 to 2024, and are worth 27% of each SDG score.
  • For evidence questions THE gives up to 3 points: 1 for the statement, 1 for the evidence and 1 if the evidence is public. A university that provides no data on a metric scores zero for it.
  • A large language model is the primary validator of qualitative evidence, with human quality assurance. Only one piece of evidence per indicator is accepted, and documents or pages that require clicking through several links are rejected. Online evidence must stay public until at least the start of the next data-collection cycle.
  • Data requested for 2026 relate to the academic, calendar or financial year ending in 2024.

SDG 17 is the only compulsory goal. Its metrics are research on partnerships (17.1), relationships to support the goals (17.2, worth 18.5% of the goal score), publication of SDG reports (17.3, 27.2%) and education for the SDGs (17.4, 27.2%).

THE places UTM in the 101-200 band of the 2026 overall table. UTM's rank in each of the 17 goals is on the Results page. Questions about the ratings can be sent to THE at impact@timeshighereducation.com.

See also the notes on ARWU (Shanghai) and QS, and the evidence pages that support UTM's answers.

Sources