THE World University Rankings 2013

The Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2012-13 are out

The final ranking of the season is now available from THE. The top 20 looks like this:

1 California Institute of Technology (1)

=2 Oxford University (4)

=2 Stanford University (2=)


4 Harvard (2=)


5 MIT (7)

6 Princeton (5)

7 Cambridge (6)


8 Imperial College London (8)

9 University of California, Berkeley (10)

10 University of Chicago (9)


11 Yale University (11)

12 ETH Zürich (15)


13 University of California, Los Angeles (13)

14 Columbia University (12)


15 University of Pennsylvania (16)

16 Johns Hopkins University (14)

17 University College London (17)

18 Cornell University (20)

19 Northwestern (26)

20 University of Michigan (18)

CalTech remains at number one for the second year in a row but not a great deal of movement generally in the top 20 and there are still four UK universities in there.

More details of the methodology and regional and subject variations are available on the THE World University Rankings site.

UK rankings

As the following shows, there are 10 UK institutions in the top 100 (two fewer than last year):

2= University of Oxford


7 University of Cambridge


8 Imperial College London

17 University College London

32 University of Edinburgh



39 LSE



49 University of Manchester

57 King’s College London



74 University of Bristol

80 Durham University

And 21 more in the second 100:

103 York

108 University of St Andrews

110= University of Sussex

110= University of Sheffield

119 Royal Holloway

120 University of Nottingham

124= Warwick

130= Southampton

139 University of Glasgow

142= Leeds



145= Lancaster University

145= Queen Mary

153 Exeter

158= Birmingham

171= Liverpool

176= Aberdeen

176= Reading

176= UEA

180= Newcastle

196= Leicester

200 Birkbeck

The overall analysis includes the proposition that universities in the West are losing ground to those in Asia. It is argued that greater investment in the East is benefitting those universities at the expense of European and US institutions which have suffered from government funding cuts. Whilst the rankings do show some change it is perhaps premature to attribute such movement to Western government policies on the basis of one year’s figures and given the relative stability of most of the indicators used (see below).

Some of the other highlights noted by THE:

• The highest-ranked institution outside of the US and UK is ETH Zürich, in Switzerland, in 12^th place

• Asia’s number one university is the University of Tokyo, in 27^thplace

• After the US and UK, the Netherlands is the next best represented nation in the top 200, with 12 institutions, but its highest-ranked institution, Leiden University, makes only 64^th place

• Of the so-called BRIC developing economies, Russia and India have no representatives in the top 200

• All of the Netherlands’ 12 universities improved their positions in the rankings

• Japan has five top 200 universities, more than any other Asian nation, but most of its representatives have slipped a little down the table while Asian rivals rise

• Ireland has just two top 200 institutions – and neither make the top 100

• Six countries have only one top 200 representative – Austria, Brazil, Finland, New Zealand, South Africa and Taiwan

• Australia increased its representation by one, and now has eight institutions in the table. Six of the eight improved their rankings

• The average top 200 US university fell 6.5 places, while the average UK institution fell 6.7 places

• The South Korean institutions in the top 200 rose a startling 23.5 place on average, and the Hong Kong institutions rose an average of 8.5 places

The data used is taken from five main areas as follows:

Industry Income – innovation
1. Research income from industry / Academic staff
Teaching – the learning environment
2. Reputation survey – Teaching
3. Staff-to-student ratio
4. PhDs awarded / Undergraduate degrees awarded
5. PhDs awarded / Academic staff
6. Institutional income / Academic staff
Citations – research influence
7. Citation impact (normalised average citations per paper)
Research – volume, income and reputation
8. Reputation survey – Research
9. Research income / Academic staff
10. Scholarly papers / (Academic staff + Research staff)
International Outlook – staff, students and research
11. International students / Total students
12. International academic staff / Total academic staff
13. Scholarly papers with one or more international co-authors / Total scholarly papers

All interesting stuff in any case.

(All of the above data is from the Times Higher Education with data supplied by Thomson Reuters.)