U of T remains Canada’s top university as the rest drop in world rankings

Every other Canadian university fell in latest list published by Center for World University Rankings

Published Jun 01, 2026  •  2 minute read

The University of Toronto downtown campus. Photo by Cynthia McLeod /Toronto Sun

Almost all Canadian universities lost prestige in a new ranking of the world’s top post-secondary schools.

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The Center for World University Rankings released its newest rankings on Monday. Every one of Canada’s 38 universities, except for the University of Toronto, fell compared to last year.

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U of T is still Canada’s top-ranked school at No. 23, while Montreal’s McGill University dropped one spot to 28. The University of British Columbia in Vancouver dropped to 49 from 48. The rest of the top 10 Canadian universities rank as follows:

— University of Alberta, No. 82;

— University of Montreal, No. 126;

— Western University, No. 187;

— McMaster University, No. 190;

— University of Calgary, No. 203;

— University of Waterloo, No. 216;

— University of Ottawa, No. 226.

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Canadian education in decline

Years of inadequate funding along with an inability to adapt to real-world economic demands have taken their toll on Canadian education, according to experts.

“The sector is not as strong as it once was and its role in building Canada’s future is under threat,” wrote Jackie Pichette, director of skills policy at Royal Bank of Canada, in a 2025 report. “Many colleges and universities are financially unstable and the sector is often perceived as unresponsive to economic needs; these issues are mutually reinforcing.

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“Post-secondary institutions across Canada are closing programs and campuses and reducing staff to bring temporary budgetary relief. But broader policy and funding changes are needed to ensure the sector’s sustainability. Like the country’s economy, post-secondary needs to pivot.”

The report added that public funding for universities has steadily decreased and was $13 billion short of where it was 15 years ago.

Unregulated international student tuition has helped subsidize domestic students, but the federal government capped permit applications in 2024 and restricted post-grad work permit eligibility — which draws many international students — to college programs linked to labour shortages.

Without that new money, Canadian schools, particularly in Ontario, are turning to program cuts to offset deficits and financial losses.

The woke factor

Increasingly, Canadian universities are perceived as having completely abandoned the idea of institutional neutrality and having been ideologically captured by radical left activists in both the student body and faculty and race-obsessed diversity, equity and inclusion commissars who believe Canada to be an illegitimate, genocidal state.

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In recent years, a number of moderate and conservative-leaning voices say they have been bullied and sanctioned out of the halls of Canadian academia, environments where free speech and the exchange of free ideas are supposed to flourish. Past job postings at UBC and Ottawa’s Carleton University, for example, insist that the successful candidate have experience in “decolonization, reconciliation, anti-racist and social justice approaches.”

The top three universities in the world, meanwhile, were based in the U.S. including top-ranked Harvard University, which was followed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Stanford University. The U.S. in fact, had 10 universities ranked inside the top 12.

The University of Cambridge and the University of Oxford, both of which are based in England, rounded out the top five.

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