Three of Canada's universities are at the top of the world's influence

The Times Higher Education portal annually publishes global rankings of universities. The portal assesses universities by their impact on the world: the basis is taken of 17 Sustainable Development Goals developed by the UN. They include the eradication of poverty and hunger, gender equality, action on climate change, economic growth and much more. The Times ranking is the only one that compares universities by such criteria.

The 2021 ranking includes 1,115 universities from 94 countries. The leader was the British University of Manchester, while the second and third places went to the Australian University of Sydney and the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT University).

Three institutions ranked high among Canadian universities:

• Queen's University (Queen's University) — 5th place;
• University of British Columbia — 13th place;
• McMaster University is ranked 14th.

Another 12 universities made it into the top 100:

• University of Toronto — 34th place;
• University of Montreal — 39th place;
• University of Calgary — 43rd place;
• Simon Fraser University is ranked 46th;
• University of Western Ontario (Western University) — 52nd place;
• Concordia University — 62nd place;
• University of Alberta — 64th place;
• York University — 67th place;
• University Laval (Université Laval) — 70th place;
• University of Saskatchewan — 96th place;
• Lakehead University and University of Waterloo ranked 99th.

According to another ranking, 11 Canadian universities were among the top universities in the world, with three of them in the top 100.

There are also Russian universities in the ranking, but none of them made it into the top 100. Altai State University, N.E. Bauman Moscow State Technical University and Plekhanov Russian University of Economics are ranked 101 to 200. G.V. Plekhanov Russian University of Economics.

Universities in Ukraine are beyond the 400th line, while Kazakhstan and Belarus are beyond the 600th.