If you’re looking to study at one of the top universities in Canada, there’s a fairly strong chance you’ll have considered studying in either Toronto or Montréal. One Anglophone and one Francophone, these are the two largest cities in Canada, and both offer an impressive selection of world-leading universities – including Canada’s two highest-ranked, the University of Toronto and McGill University.

More broadly, the provinces within which Toronto and Montréal are based – Ontario and Quebec – each boast an extensive selection of world-class universities.

We all pay attention to university rankings. For students and parents, they can be an important guide in choosing a university. For institutions, policy makers, and politicians, they can be a source of pride, frustration, or envy. In some cases, such as Russia’s “5/100 initiative”, the desire for an improved position in international ranking tables can also be a trigger for investments in strengthening institutions or education systems.

But do international rankings provide an effective measure of relative quality for universities across a country or region, or around the world? And how do they relate to emerging efforts to create a set of globally accepted quality standards for universities?