Why today's launch of the THE Impact Rankings should be an almighty global celebration.

I have to be honest: the launch of a new university ranking can often generate as much heat as it does light.

THE’s world university rankings are underpinned by tens of millions of data points, so we can draw out rich insights to shine a bright light on the shifting dynamics of world higher education across multiple parameters.

And globally renowned rankings like THE’s also generate a lot of heat. They stir up passions and prompt many hot takes: on the metrics, on the weightings and most of all on the results themselves.

But today, as we seek to come to terms with a global health and economic crisis with profound and lasting effects on our sector, on our individual lives and on our world -- I really hope that this ranking launch generates something rather different to the usual heat and light.

As today’s new ranking is designed to capture not simply a university’s research power and prestige, but its impact on our society and on our world – I hope this launch generates one almighty, sector-wide, global celebration.

A celebration of all the wonderful, complex, inter-related, boundary-defying, diverse, multi-faceted, ways that universities of all colours and stripes, of all missions and types, from all corners of our planet, make the world a better place.

The THE Impact Rankings have been many years in development, but it seems so important that we release this research now, when it has perhaps never been more clear how much universities are an extraordinary force for good.

It is not just the obvious contribution of university-trained doctors and nurses selflessly and heroically treating patients and saving lives.

It is not just the engineers improvising essential equipment, the epidemiologists seeking to develop models from the rapidly emerging data to inform public policy. It is not just the virologists and immunologists racing against time to develop and deliver the tests and the vaccines in an unprecedented show of global collaboration and global unity.

It is also the sociologists, anthropologists and economists who are seeking to help us to understand and to mitigate the profound socio-economic fall-out of the crisis. It is also the arts and humanities scholars who will bring vital critical thinking and communications skills and help us all re-imagine a different future for humanity itself.

It is also, of course, the administrators and the professional services and support staff and everyone working tirelessly under huge pressure, to keep the lights on and the wheels turning at universities all across the world.

So this new ranking launch must be, above all, a celebration of each and every person who works in the world’s universities.

Yes, in a ranked list, there are those at the top and those at the lower end. But this new data out today showcases excellence across all 17 of the individual Sustainable Development Goals, in 17 separate tables. There are many, many winners, and there are certainly no losers.

Every one of the 859 institutions from 89 countries that submitted data and joined this movement, and demonstrated its commitment to a more sustainable future, is in my view, a winner.

The data is designed to recognise and reward the vast array of good practice across all SDGs that is already taking place in universities right across the world. It is also crucially designed to uncover and promote a more diverse and inclusive range of activity that traditional rankings do not capture.

We hope that our new data will inspire others, we hope it will promote collaboration and the sharing of ideas, and we hope that it will provide a powerful incentive - as well as the strategic intelligence - to further promote excellence in meeting the global goals.

Finally, as we reflect on the many, many thousands of tragic losses caused by the pandemic, as we work in international harmony to devise a way out of the crisis, as we contemplate its profound long-term effects on our economy and indeed the very fabric of our society, I hope that this new performance data also engages politicians, our paymasters and the wider public, to help them to properly and fully appreciate the profound public good of the world’s universities.

Thank you all for the contribution you make.