The 2010 -2011 World University Rankings, published today by the Times Higher Education magazine uses a new methodology that places less importance on reputation and heritage than in previous years, giving more weight to measures of excellence in all three core elements of a university’s mission - research, teaching and knowledge transfer. In all, it includes 13 separate performance indicators, across five categories.
The result makes sobering reading for Europe’s universities as a whole, which fare less well in this ranking than in the QS World Universities Ranking published last week and the Shanghai ranking that appeared in August.
The QS league table caused a stir for promoting Cambridge to number one, ahead of Harvard for the first time, but today the Times Higher ranking puts Cambridge at sixth equal with Oxford University. Imperial College London at ninth is the only other non-US institution in the top ten, and ETH Zurich at 15 is the only other European University in the top twenty.
In total, 26 European universities are in the top 100 in the Times Higher ranking, of which 14 are in the UK. In contrast the QS ranking places 38 European institutions in the top 100, of which 19 are in the UK, while the Shanghai ranking includes 33 European universities in its top 100.
While there may be arguments on the finer points of what university league tables measure, there is no doubting their influence. The QS website welcomed half a million unique users last week, while the Shanghai index is credited with driving large-scale university reform and investment in France and Germany.
The Times Higher spent 10 months reworking its methodology after ending its relationship with the data supplier QS, and signing up to use data supplied by the business information company Thomson Reuters. The QS World Universities ranking published last week is, in effect, a continuation of the old Times Higher ranking, which was first published in 2004.
The three league tables have one thing very much in common: US institutions dominate. In the Times Higher ranking they take all five of the top places, and in total there are 72 US universities in the global top 200.
The rankings show how investment in higher education produces world-class universities capable of attracting the best students and academics. China, South Korea and Canada, which invest significantly in higher education as an economic driver, all scored highly under the new methodology.
China has six institutions in the top 200, more than any other country in Asia, overtaking Japan for the first time. Peking University is the highest-ranked Chinese institution at 37, with only five European universities placed higher.
Technology-focused universities are ranked highly, with California Institute of Technology in second spot and Massachusetts Institute of Technology in third. While the only university outside North America and the UK in the top 20 is ETH Zurich, Switzerland has a total of six institutions in the top 200.
Phil Baty, editor of the Times Higher ranking, claimed the new methodology provides an accurate and reliable picture of global higher education. “Some institutions, and even whole countries, have not come out well under the new system. Others look much better,” he said.
Of course, the change in methodology means a move up or down from the Times Higher table last year cannot be seen as a change in performance, but Baty said, “We do contend, however, that these tables are realistic, and so in some cases they may deliver an unpleasant wake-up call that the days of trading on reputation alone are coming to an end.”
Steve Smith, the president of Universities UK, a body representing university vice chancellors, said the new ranking uses more robust measures. “This bolsters confidence in the evaluation method,” Smith said.
The weightings are as follows:
Teaching – the learning environment – 30 per cent
Citation impact – a normalised measure of research influence - 32.5 per cent
Research – volume, income and reputation – 30 per cent
International mix – staff and student ratios – 5 per cent
Industry income - measuring knowledge transfer - 2.5 per cent
The Times Higher becomes the only global ranking system to assess teaching and learning and includes the first-ever global survey of institutions’ teaching reputation.
For more information, see:
The 2010-11 Times Higher Education World University Rankings
(Copyright Times Higher Education 2010/11)
| Rank | Institution |
|---|---|
| 1 | Harvard University |
| 2 | California Institute of Technology |
| 3 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| 4 | Stanford University |
| 5 | Princeton University |
| =6 | University of Cambridge |
| =6 | University of Oxford |
| 8 | University of California, Berkeley |
| 9 | Imperial College London |
| 10 | Yale University |
| 11 | University of California, Los Angeles |
| 12 | University of Chicago |
| 13 | Johns Hopkins University |
| 14 | Cornell University |
| =15 | University of Michigan |
| =15 | Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich |
| 17 | University of Toronto |
| 18 | Columbia University |
| 19 | University of Pennsylvania |
| 20 | Carnegie Mellon University |
| 21 | University of Hong Kong |
| 22 | University College London |
| 23 | University of Washington |
| 24 | Duke University |
| 25 | Northwestern University |
| 26 | University of Tokyo |
| 27 | Georgia Institute of Technology |
| 28 | Pohang University of Science and Technology |
| 29 | University of California, Santa Barbara |
| =30 | University of British Columbia |
| =30 | University of North Carolina |
| 32 | University of California, San Diego |
| 33 | University of Illinois – Urbana |
| 34 | National University of Singapore |
| 35 | McGill University |
| 36 | University of Melbourne |
| 37 | Peking University |
| 38 | Washington University St Louis |
| 39 | École Polytechnique in Paris |
| 40 | University of Edinburgh |
| 41 | Hong Kong University of Science and Technology |
| 42 | École Normale Supérieure, Paris |
| =43 | University of Göttingen |
| =43 | Australian National University |
| =43 | University of Wisconsin |
| =43 | Karolinska Institute |
| 47 | Rice University |
| 48 | École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne |
| =49 | University of Science and Technology of China |
| =49 | University of California, Irvine |
| 51 | Vanderbilt University |
| 52 | University of Minnesota |
| 53 | Tufts University |
| 54 | University of California, Davis |
| 55 | Brown University |
| 56 | University of Massachusetts |
| 57 | Kyoto University |
| 58 | Tsinghua University |
| 59 | Boston University |
| 60 | New York University |
| =61 | Emory University |
| =61 | University of Munich |
| 63 | University of Notre Dame |
| 64 | University of Pittsburgh |
| 65 | Case Western Reserve University |
| 66 | Ohio State University |
| 67 | University of Colorado |
| =68 | Yeshiva University |
| =68 | University of Bristol |
| =68 | University of California, Santa Cruz |
| 71 | University of Sydney |
| 72 | University of Virginia |
| =73 | University of Adelaide |
| =73 | University of Southern California |
| 75 | William & Mary |
| 76 | Trinity College Dublin |
| 77 | King’s College London |
| 78 | Stony Brook University |
| =79 | University of Sussex |
| =79 | Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology |
| =81 | University of Queensland |
| =81 | University of York |
| =83 | University of Utah |
| =83 | Ruprecht Karl University of Heidelberg |
| 85 | Durham University |
| 86 | London School of Economics |
| 87 | University of Manchester |
| 88 | Royal Holloway, University of London |
| 89 | Lund University |
| =90 | University of Zurich |
| =90 | University of Southampton |
| =90 | Wake Forest University |
| 93 | McMaster University |
| 94 | University College Dublin |
| =95 | University of Basel |
| =95 | George Washington University |
| =95 | University of Arizona |
| 98 | University of Maryland, College Park |
| 99 | Dartmouth College |
| 100 | École Normale Supérieure de Lyon |
| 101 | Technical University of Munich |
| 102 | University of Helsinki |
| 103 | University of St Andrews |
| 104 | Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute |
| 105 | Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey |
| 106 | Purdue University |
| =107 | National Tsing Hua University |
| =107 | University of Cape Town |
| =109 | Seoul National University |
| =109 | Pennsylvania State University |
| 111 | Hong Kong Baptist University |
| =112 | Tokyo Institute of Technology |
| =112 | Bilkent University |
| 114 | Eindhoven University of Technology |
| =115 | University of Hawaii |
| =115 | National Taiwan University |
| 117 | University of California, Riverside |
| 118 | University of Geneva |
| 119 | Katholieke Universiteit Leuven |
| =120 | Queen Mary, University of London |
| =120 | Nanjing University |
| =122 | Technical University of Denmark |
| =122 | Michigan State University |
| =124 | Leiden University |
| =124 | Ghent University |
| =124 | Lancaster University |
| 127 | University of Alberta |
| 128 | University of Glasgow |
| 129 | Stockholm University |
| =130 | University of Victoria |
| =130 | Osaka University |
| =132 | University of Freiburg |
| =132 | Tohoku University |
| =132 | University of Iowa |
| 135 | University of Bergen |
| 136 | University of Lausanne |
| 137 | University of Sheffield |
| 138 | University of Montreal |
| 139 | VU University Amsterdam |
| =140 | University of Dundee |
| =140 | Pierre and Marie Curie University |
| 142 | University of Barcelona |
| 143 | Utrecht University |
| 144 | Wageningen University and Research Center |
| =145 | University of Birmingham |
| =145 | University of Auckland |
| =147 | Uppsala University |
| =147 | Alexandria University |
| =149 | Hong Kong Polytechnic University |
| =149 | University of Aberdeen |
| 151 | Delft University of Technology |
| =152 | University of New South Wales |
| =152 | Birkbeck, University of London |
| =152 | Newcastle University |
| 155 | Pompeu Fabra University |
| =156 | Indiana University |
| =156 | Iowa State University |
| 158 | Medical College of Georgia |
| =159 | Erasmus University Rotterdam |
| =159 | University of Delaware |
| =161 | Arizona State University |
| =161 | Boston College |
| 163 | National Sun Yat-Sen University |
| 164 | Georgetown University |
| =165 | University of Liverpool |
| =165 | University of Amsterdam |
| 167 | Aarhus University |
| =168 | University of Leeds |
| =168 | University of Würzburg |
| 170 | University of Groningen |
| 171 | Sun Yat-sen University |
| 172 | Johann Wolfgang Goethe University Frankfurt am Main |
| 173 | Bielefeld University |
| =174 | Nanyang Technological University |
| =174 | University of East Anglia |
| =174 | University of Nottingham |
| 177 | University of Copenhagen |
| =178 | Monash University |
| =178 | Humboldt University of Berlin |
| =178 | University of Bonn |
| 181 | National Chiao Tung University |
| 182 | RWTH Aachen University |
| 183 | Middle East Technical University |
| 184 | University of Exeter |
| 185 | University of Twente |
| 186 | University of Konstanz |
| =187 | Karlsruhe Institute of Technology |
| =187 | University of Innsbruck |
| 189 | Eberhard Karls University, Tübingen |
| =190 | University of Cincinnati |
| =190 | Drexel University |
| =190 | Yonsei University |
| =193 | Dalhousie University |
| =193 | Royal Institute of Technology |
| 195 | University of Vienna |
| 196 | Kent State University |
| =197 | University of Illinois – Chicago |
| =197 | Zhejiang University |
| =199 | Simon Fraser University |
| =199 | Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences |
The 2010-11 Times Higher Education World University Rankings - Top 20 Countries
(Copyright Times Higher Education 2010/11)1. US
2. UK
3. Germany
4. Canada
5. Netherlands
6. Australia
7. Switzerland
8. China
9. Sweden
10. Japan
11. Hong Kong
12. France
13. South Korea
14. Taiwan
15. Denmark
16. Singapore
17. Ireland
18. Belgium
19. Spain
20. Turkey
The criteria used
| Area | 2009 metrics used for the Times Higher Education-QS World University Rankings | % | 2010-11 metrics - data provided by Thomson Reuters | % |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Teaching | Reputational teaching survey | 15% | ||
| PhD awards per academic | 6% | |||
| Ratio of staff to students | 20% | Undergraduates admitted per academic | 4.5% | |
| Income per academic | 2.25% | |||
| PhD awards/bachelor's awards | 2.25% | |||
| Citations | Research citations/numbers of researchers | 20% | Citation impact - normalised measure of research influence | 32.5% |
| Research | Academic peer review | 40% | Reputational survey research | 19.5% |
| Research income (scaled) | 5.25% | |||
| Papers per academic and research staff | 4.5% | |||
| Public research income/total research income | 0.75% | |||
| International mix | Ratio of international to domestic staff | 5% | Ratio of international to domestic staff | 3% |
| Ratio of international to domestic students | 5% | Ratio of international to domestic students | 2% | |
| Knowledge transfer | Industry income | 2.5% | ||
| Reputation | Employer survey | 10% | ||
| TOTAL | 100% | 100% |
Receive the Funding Newswire each Tuesday, our Policy Bulletin each Thursday, and news about bridging Europe’s east-west innovation gap twice a month in The Widening. 