The Times Higher Education (THE) supplement, which produces one of the world's most prestigious and influential university rankings, has published the " 100 Under 50" ranking, a list of the Top 100 universities in the world under 50 years old, for the third time. UPF is in 13th position worldwide, 7th in Europe level and 1st in Spain, which means that the university has improved its position compared to the previous ranking.

A more "objective" methodology for assessing young universities

The first "100 Under 50" ranking was published in May 2012 in order to show that for some universities, it was possible to demonstrate excellence in a relatively short period of time. The ranking was also an interesting tool for showing which higher education systems were challenging the United States and the United Kingdom as higher education powerhouses.

The "100 Under 50" ranking uses the same five categories and thirteen performance indicators as the global ranking. The weighting of the five major categories, remains the same despite the reduction of the weighting in indicators related to institutional "prestige" (which are obtained from surveys) in order to give more weight to "objective" performance indicators.

The five categories and performance indicators used are:

• Research: volume; income and reputation (30%)
• Citations: research influence (30%)
• Teaching: reputation; academic staff-to-student ratio; PhD-to-bachelor's degree ratio; academic staff-to-students awarded ratio; academic staff-to-institutional income ratio
• International outlook: people (students and academic staff) and research (7.5%)
• Industry income: innovation (2.5%)