World Rankings 2008
Content
WORLD UNIVERSITY RANKINGS 2008
9 OCTOBER 2008
his is the fifth issue of the World University Rankings published by Times Higher Education and QS Quacquarelli Symonds. Those who have followed the rankings from their birth will notice that one thing has not changed. Harvard University has been ranked the best in the world for the fifth time in succession. Cynics might claim that its achievement is made simpler by its $35 billion (£19 billion) endowment. But there is more to academic success than money. Harvard has consistently spent its $3 billion annual budget wisely. But its lead is now a slender one, with Yale University scoring 99.8 to Harvard’s 100. These rankings were set up after a call to the UK Government for rankings that would reveal whether the UK’s fast-expanding university system was competitive on the world stage. Like previous editions, the tables we publish on pages iv-vii show that it is. US and UK universities take up the top 15 places this year. The US has 58 universities in the top 200, the same number as in 2007, and the UK has 29. This means, too, that these nations take the top two places in our analysis of the strength of university systems. This new measure, published for the first time this year on pages x-xi, is intended to gauge the success of different countries in delivering high-grade university education. Universities are funded in a wide range of ways. As might be expected for the world’s richest country, the US has a uniquely deep and wide range of ways in which money finds its way to universities. Americans accept that going to college is a huge expense to students and their parents. They also give generously to universities they
T
This year our rankings show not only the top institutions but also the strongest countries in higher education, says Martin Ince
may have left decades earlier. The US Government, charities and companies are big spenders on research, and individual states are great supporters of local university systems. In addition, the US is a major destination for international students. Many US universities are now rich enough to admit them on a needs-blind basis with scholarships. There are nine Australian universities in the top 200, three fewer than in 2007 but still an impressive total, and the Australian National University is the top institution outside the US and the UK. Here, a key factor seems to be Australia’s marketing across Asia. While Australian institutions are highly regarded by the world’s academics, some experts believe that their status may soon be imperilled by the rising quality and ambition of Chinese higher education. Both the Australian system and the Canadian, with 12 universities in our top 200, benefit from the use of English in teaching and in research publications.
in the round
The response
Scholars, students and ideas became internationally mobile centuries before the word “globalisation” gained currency in the 1960s. More importantly, universities around the world now have business models that involve foreign students, foreign staff and foreign money. At the same time, it is universally agreed that higher education and research are vital to national economic success and to the provision of public services such as healthcare. From London to Auckland, universities use their position in these rankings not just in advertising and publicity, but also in planning. In Asia in particular, where interest in ranking is greatest, many universities name gaining a place in our top 100 as one of their corporate ambitions. While everyone agrees that universities are vital to national prosperity, they cost money long before they earn any. The rich world dominates this top 200 table, especially North America, Western Europe and the growing economies of Asia. Nonetheless, universities in the developing world continue to appear in the rankings. South Africa’s only entrant last year, the University of Cape Town, has risen from 200th place to 179th. Brazil and Argentina have one entry each, at 196 and 197 respectively. Mexico’s
New entrants
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This supplement was written by Martin Ince, contributing editor of Times Higher Education and editor of the Times Higher Education-QS World University Rankings. He welcomes response to this publication, emailed to [email protected]. He wishes to thank Nunzio Quacquarelli and Ben Sowter of QS for their leading roles in this project, as well as the staff of our citations data supplier Scopus.
National Autonomous University has risen to 150th place. And from India, two branches of the Indian Institute of Technology, in Delhi and Bombay, are in the top 200. Despite such success stories, we recognise that measures designed to assess the qualities of the universities of Oxford and Berkeley may not be suited to assessing universities in the developing world. We are in the process of working to produce more appropriate measures. Times Higher Education and QS have worked to devise a ranking system that captures universities as a whole, with data derived from academic experts and from knowledgeable employers, as well as other measures relating to teaching, research and global appeal. Our longest-established counterpart, the Academic Ranking of World Universities, based at Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China, focuses mainly on scientific research. It is worth noting that the Times Higher Education-QS top 200 published here and the top 200 universities in the ARWU ranking, published in August 2008, have 145 institutions in common. The main differences are that our rankings do not count specialist medical institutions and the ARWU counts many middle-ranking US universities that are not visible internationally but that generate well-cited scientific research. This overlap suggests that both rankings are capturing a top group of world universities, even though there is variation between the positions allotted to individual institutions by the two systems. If a top group does exist, its members will naturally attract top academics and students, as well as the money to support the best scholarship and research. l
9 October 2008 Times Higher Education iii
THE WORLD’S TOP 200 UNIVERSITIES
Staff/student score Overall score 100.0 99.8 99.5 98.9 98.6 98.4 98.1 98.0 96.7 96.3 96.1 95.7 94.4 94.4 94.3 92.0 91.2 91.0 90.0 89.7 89.6 89.5 89.3 89.1 87.4 87.1 85.2 84.8 84.4 84.3 84.3 84.1 83.3 83.0 83.0 82.9 82.4 82.3 81.4 81.3 81.1 81.0 80.7 80.1 79.8 79.1 78.7 78.5 78.2 78.1 78.1 78.1 78.0 77.8 77.7 77.0 76.9 76.3 75.8 Citations per staff score International staff score 87 89 98 96 100 98 96 78 33 29 83 91 30 30 28 99 26 59 27 62 50 91 91 100 30 100 56 29 91 23 100 85 30 33 62 88 97 54 100 28 80 98 100 25 83 26 99 67 99 100 27 23 73 28 31 23 54 20 25 Recruiter review score Country Intl students score 81 71 95 96 93 100 100 83 94 89 79 82 66 68 76 91 87 51 40 95 97 85 82 94 26 92 58 69 84 36 100 74 61 61 93 36 93 96 97 56 46 86 78 28 91 59 99 69 76 100 36 37 32 57 36 24 81 29 36 Peer review score 100 100 100 100 100 99 96 100 100 100 97 100 97 99 100 100 100 99 100 100 95 93 96 95 99 94 92 93 91 100 100 83 88 100 80 100 99 100 86 96 100 85 95 90 97 91 98 88 90 63 100 97 88 64 93 97 87 98 84 2008 rank 2007 rank Institution Harvard University Yale University University of Cambridge University of Oxford California Institute of Technology Imperial College London University College London University of Chicago Massachusetts Institute of Technology Columbia University University of Pennsylvania Princeton University Duke University Johns Hopkins University Cornell University Australian National University Stanford University University of Michigan University of Tokyo McGill University Carnegie Mellon University King’s College London University of Edinburgh ETH Zurich (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology) Kyoto University University of Hong Kong Brown University Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris University of Manchester University of California, Los Angeles National University of Singapore University of Bristol Northwestern University University of British Columbia Ecole Polytechnique University of California, Berkeley University of Sydney University of Melbourne Hong Kong University of Science and Technology New York University University of Toronto Chinese University of Hong Kong University of Queensland Osaka University University of New South Wales Boston University Monash University University of Copenhagen Trinity College Dublin Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne Peking University Seoul National University University of Amsterdam Dartmouth College University of Wisconsin-Madison Tsinghua University Heidelberg University University of California, San Diego University of Washington
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13= 13= 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30= 30= 32 33 34= 34= 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50= 50= 50= 53 54 55 56 57 58 59
1 2= 2= 2= 7= 5 9 7= 10 11 14 6 13 15 20= 16 19 38= 17 12 20= 24 23 42 25 18 32 26 30 41 33= 37 29 33= 28 22 31 27 53= 49 45 38= 33= 46 44 47 43 93= 53= 117= 36 51= 48 71= 55= 40 60 58 55=
US US UK UK US UK UK US US US US US US US US Australia US US Japan Canada US UK UK Switzerland Japan Hong Kong US France UK US Singapore UK US Canada France US Australia Australia Hong Kong US Canada Hong Kong Australia Japan Australia US Australia Denmark Ireland Switzerland China South Korea Netherlands US US China Germany US US
100 100 100 100 74 100 99 99 100 99 98 98 98 78 99 93 100 99 94 97 97 98 99 82 87 90 83 72 100 98 98 99 97 93 96 100 97 100 90 96 94 84 97 69 99 85 99 59 96 71 97 65 77 93 79 90 59 58 54
96 100 99 100 98 100 100 98 90 98 88 75 100 100 90 82 67 85 98 99 82 89 82 56 80 86 64 68 82 48 39 82 78 69 100 24 55 59 60 83 18 80 49 93 35 66 52 100 68 93 84 87 80 88 48 94 81 35 62
100 98 89 85 100 83 89 91 100 94 99 100 94 100 96 74 100 84 78 51 79 70 70 99 91 59 99 99 56 100 75 74 82 67 58 100 54 56 72 54 100 57 63 70 68 73 37 45 42 77 34 54 61 95 89 31 58 100 99
SOURCE: QS QUACQUARELLI SYMONDS
iv Times Higher Education 9 October 2008
THE WORLD’S TOP 200 UNIVERSITIES
Staff/student score Overall score 75.7 75.3 75.0 74.9 74.8 74.5 74.2 74.0 73.9 73.8 73.3 73.2 73.1 73.0 72.9 72.3 72.2 72.1 71.8 71.8 71.8 71.5 71.5 71.3 71.3 71.3 71.0 70.2 70.0 69.9 69.8 69.6 69.6 69.5 69.5 69.3 69.2 69.1 68.8 68.6 68.6 68.5 68.4 68.4 68.3 68.2 68.1 68.1 68.0 67.9 67.6 67.4 67.2 67.1 66.7 66.6 66.4 66.2 66.2 Citations per staff score International staff score 24 25 43 70 74 94 100 45 97 92 60 37 52 95 92 82 81 100 80 54 42 67 95 39 92 92 90 72 68 28 21 51 83 70 51 48 24 42 39 60 87 57 22 71 71 35 87 99 95 18 26 61 38 31 17 64 49 27 79 Recruiter review score Country Peer review score 2008 rank Institution Intl students score 54 45 47 41 41 99 100 24 100 97 43 51 51 60 64 72 72 99 66 77 73 58 84 78 99 83 89 33 52 26 51 21 74 33 70 36 38 34 22 57 83 45 21 88 64 36 95 68 82 18 52 100 31 32 19 85 73 32 34 2007 rank 161= 90= 74= 71= 84 50 59 89 105 57 51= 73 61 83 97= 65= 68 69 63 67 92 114= 74= 97= 76 64 70 142= 106 96 85= 100 93= 128 65= 132= 110 77= 117= 77= 80= 82 151= 119 80= 90= 62 140= 177= 231= 102= 111 102= 85= 151= 85= 123 108 88
60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78= 78= 78= 81= 81= 83= 83= 83= 86 87 88 89 90 91= 91= 93= 93= 95 96 97 98 99= 99= 101 102= 102= 104 105 106= 106= 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117= 117=
Washington University in St Louis Tokyo Institute of Technology Emory University Uppsala University Leiden University University of Auckland London School of Economics Utrecht University University of Geneva University of Warwick University of Texas at Austin University of Illinois Katholieke Universiteit Leuven University of Glasgow University of Alberta University of Birmingham University of Sheffield Nanyang Technological University Delft University of Technology Technical University of Munich Rice University University of Aarhus University of York Georgia Institute of Technology University of St Andrews University of Western Australia University of Nottingham University of Minnesota Lund University University of California, Davis Case Western Reserve University University of Helsinki Université de Montréal Hebrew University of Jerusalem Ludwig-Maximilians University, Munich Korea Advanced Inst of Science & Technology University of Virginia University of Pittsburgh University of California, Santa Barbara Purdue University University of Southampton Vanderbilt University University of North Carolina University of Southern California University of Leeds Pennsylvania State University University of Adelaide University of Zurich University College Dublin Technion – Israel Institute of Technology Georgetown University Maastricht University Tohoku University Fudan University Tel Aviv University University of Vienna Université Catholique de Louvain McMaster University Queen’s University
US Japan US Sweden Netherlands New Zealand UK Netherlands Switzerland UK US US Belgium UK Canada UK UK Singapore Netherlands Germany US Denmark UK US UK Australia UK US Sweden US US Finland Canada Israel Germany South Korea US US US US UK US US US UK US Australia Switzerland Ireland Israel US Netherlands Japan China Israel Austria Belgium Canada Canada
64 77 62 91 87 95 88 89 69 83 95 94 92 72 91 73 69 87 78 73 62 76 62 78 59 72 72 79 82 84 60 88 89 89 84 76 66 62 88 85 63 53 74 65 72 78 72 76 72 84 69 51 63 89 85 89 85 86 77
55 76 67 60 61 94 100 66 36 100 95 67 83 78 48 94 97 87 87 59 55 38 93 83 95 88 98 54 68 46 42 43 36 25 45 53 93 40 50 82 90 84 87 73 98 79 89 38 91 58 94 72 49 91 47 67 63 42 82
100 70 96 43 35 36 59 62 58 60 26 43 34 67 56 57 68 47 66 86 76 72 77 22 74 52 64 38 45 42 95 55 36 35 69 61 61 95 21 34 61 100 61 49 57 39 39 21 67 48 65 80 98 49 24 10 19 26 45
95 87 91 85 97 42 26 72 98 38 69 72 72 69 55 65 60 38 49 57 95 74 57 99 62 65 46 94 68 96 88 71 70 89 51 79 82 79 99 60 61 60 71 80 50 81 61 99 33 79 62 72 63 39 98 67 74 91 55
SOURCE: QS QUACQUARELLI SYMONDS
9 October 2008 Times Higher Education v
THE WORLD’S TOP 200 UNIVERSITIES
Staff/student score Citations per staff score Overall score 66.1 65.9 65.8 65.4 65.4 65.3 65.3 65.2 65.1 64.8 64.6 64.1 63.9 63.8 63.4 63.4 63.4 63.1 62.6 62.6 62.5 62.4 62.3 62.0 61.9 61.8 61.8 61.5 61.2 61.2 61.0 60.9 60.7 60.4 60.3 60.1 59.8 59.8 59.6 59.5 59.4 59.1 59.0 58.7 58.7 58.5 58.4 58.3 58.3 58.1 58.0 57.9 57.9 57.9 57.8 57.6 57.6 57.6 57.5 57.5 International staff score 63 26 59 84 48 100 31 57 63 98 60 92 84 24 71 90 80 40 47 34 42 47 19 42 54 61 34 24 100 26 24 42 52 92 91 16 37 55 37 20 63 96 85 42 82 93 33 23 39 26 30 24 49 90 70 20 23 62 77 46 Recruiter review score Intl students score 71 32 41 62 39 88 25 50 81 42 54 79 80 29 77 56 67 43 68 40 56 56 13 97 18 34 20 30 43 67 90 15 29 93 80 14 31 51 49 31 31 92 82 60 79 48 34 14 52 35 80 29 45 80 98 24 13 48 95 60 Country Peer review score 53 62 73 60 68 73 87 58 71 57 86 60 62 80 61 45 54 68 85 77 79 41 76 41 76 63 75 69 68 64 66 81 79 49 44 64 64 61 40 59 67 55 48 64 40 76 65 79 69 56 54 70 70 52 59 54 74 52 37 67 2008 rank 2007 rank Institution University of Rochester Nagoya University Ohio State University Durham University University of Maryland University of Otago National Taiwan University Erasmus University Rotterdam Stony Brook University Eindhoven University of Technology University of Waterloo University of Sussex University of Basel University of California, Irvine Cardiff University Technical University of Denmark University of Liverpool University of Ghent Free University of Berlin Texas A&M University Humboldt University of Berlin Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon University of Science and Technology of China Wageningen University Nanjing University University of Groningen Shanghai Jiao Tong University University of Arizona City University of Hong Kong Freiburg University Université Pierre-et-Marie-Curie, Paris VI National Autonomous University of Mexico Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey University of Bath University of Aberdeen Indian Institute of Technology Delhi VU University Amsterdam Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen Tufts University Kyushu University University of Western Ontario Queen Mary, University of London University of Lausanne Chalmers University of Technology Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne Simon Fraser University University of Florida Chulalongkorn University Göttingen University University of Notre Dame University of Frankfurt am Main University of Calgary Indiana University Bloomington University of Lancaster KTH, Royal Institute of Technology Hokkaido University Indian Institute of Technology Bombay Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute University of Leicester University of Oslo
119 120 121 122= 122= 124= 124= 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133= 133= 133= 136 137= 137= 139 140 141 142 143 144= 144= 146 147= 147= 149 150 151 152 153 154 155= 155= 157 158 159 160 161 162= 162= 164 165 166= 166= 168 169 170= 170= 170= 173 174= 174= 174= 177= 177=
95 112= 120 109 79 114= 102= 163= 224 130= 112= 121 114= 140= 99 130= 101 124 146 122 126= 157 155= 148 125 173= 163= 134 149= 144 132= 192= 177= 145 137= 307= 304= 142= 159= 136 126= 149= 217 197= 129 139 135 223 168= 155= 209= 166= 137= 147 192= 151= 269 191 185= 188=
US Japan US UK US New Zealand Taiwan Netherlands US Netherlands Canada UK Switzerland US UK Denmark UK Belgium Germany US Germany France China Netherlands China Netherlands China US Hong Kong Germany France Mexico US UK UK India Netherlands Germany US Japan Canada UK Switzerland Sweden UK Canada US Thailand Germany US Germany Canada US UK Sweden Japan India US UK Norway
33 58 80 99 56 75 73 98 35 55 69 54 32 30 89 42 81 47 22 74 43 57 67 35 68 49 83 55 58 30 17 86 42 98 71 84 50 30 64 44 61 66 51 48 88 57 56 77 25 83 51 52 70 77 58 52 76 46 59 41
100 84 40 50 55 36 40 46 47 100 18 51 98 30 66 99 69 84 24 23 64 100 56 90 66 67 69 42 44 91 89 59 47 46 78 69 84 71 62 74 26 77 41 40 68 19 37 59 65 44 66 41 27 60 47 74 44 34 63 57
67 71 70 65 78 53 54 81 75 41 62 72 34 94 39 63 55 43 72 73 36 68 56 80 33 60 28 81 54 42 40 20 51 55 51 47 38 58 95 64 77 23 85 70 55 51 73 21 46 72 57 63 58 37 46 63 43 92 71 43
vi Times Higher Education 9 October 2008
SOURCE: QS QUACQUARELLI SYMONDS
THE WORLD’S TOP 200 UNIVERSITIES
Staff/student score Citations per staff score Overall score 57.4 57.3 57.3 57.1 56.9 56.9 56.8 56.4 56.4 56.1 56.1 55.9 55.8 55.4 55.4 55.3 55.1 55.0 54.8 54.8 54.5 54.3 54.3 International staff score 86 37 43 88 50 17 28 24 99 71 52 46 53 93 26 80 56 34 31 61 24 – 68 Recruiter review score Intl students score 82 20 30 100 96 25 74 38 93 85 19 89 26 45 28 77 59 19 34 40 30 92 50 Country Peer review score 61 2008 rank 2007 rank Institution University of Cape Town University of Colorado Waseda University Macquarie University Université Libre de Bruxelles Lomonosov Moscow State University Brandeis University University of Barcelona University of Canterbury Technical University of Berlin Pohang University of Science and Technology Stuttgart University University of Massachusetts, Amherst University of Bern University of Bologna University of Reading University of Antwerp University of São Paulo University of Buenos Aires Dalhousie University Kobe University University of Athens University of Twente
179 180= 180= 182 183= 183= 185 186= 186= 188= 188= 190 191 192= 192= 194 195 196 197= 197= 199 200= 200=
200= 107 180= 168= 154 231= 208 194 188= 203= 233 165 175= 214 173= 180= 187 175= 264= 221= 197= 248= 185=
South Africa US Japan Australia Belgium Russia US Spain New Zealand Germany South Korea Germany US Switzerland Italy UK Belgium Brazil Argentina Canada Japan Greece Netherlands
56
79 65 63 80 54 77 62 62 37 52 65 40 81 44 43 77 66 59 57 40 52
66 24 89 87 62 72 34 52 86 50 34 58 54 28 69 76 37 61 91 26 61 47 48
47
15 52 36 18 19 39 19 24 46 67 77 28 59 21 56 99 38 56 43 71 67 57
68 90 23 41 65 31 80 60 37 39 99 28 68 83 40 49 37 32 19 69 36 72 51
SOURCE: QS QUACQUARELLI SYMONDS
9 October 2008 Times Higher Education vii
Strong
Our rankings are built on quantitative data and informed opinion from recruiters and academics
he Times Higher Education-QS World University Rankings aim to capture the essence of a worldclass university. This involves quality teaching and research, both of which we attempt to measure. Because a global institution will also be a magnet for academic talent, we analyse institutions’ abilities to attract staff and students from beyond their own shores. But we also consider the informed opinion of two groups – university academics and major recruiters of graduates – that have a unique insight into institutions’ strengths. This means that our ranking of the world’s top 200 universities is a compound index that uses qualitative data derived from surveys alongside quantitative data on topics such as staff and student numbers and scholarly citations. The 2008 rankings use much the same method as in 2007 but with more and better data. For us to consider a university, it must undertake work in at least two of the major academic fields: the natural sciences; biomedicine; engineering and information technology; the social sciences; and the arts and humanities. It must also teach undergraduates. This means that these rankings do not include many excellent specialist institutions, mainly medical colleges and business schools. But many universities that do not teach a full range of subjects, principally specialist science and technology colleges, show up well here. A fundamental tenet of this ranking is that academics know
Lecturer Senior lecturer
Research specialist Administrator/ Functional manager Research assistant Teaching assistant Admissions officer Librarian/ Library assistant Other President/ Vice-chancellor Vice-president/ Deputy vice-chancellor Senior administrator Head of department
SOURCE: QS QUACQUARELLI SYMONDS
T
Professor/ Associate professor
which are the best universities. Getting their opinion has been the most time-consuming part of the exercise and is also its most distinctive feature. As the chart shows, the academics we consult are spread around the world and range from lecturers to university presidents. They have to enter our survey from an academic site (.edu or an equivalent), and they have a simple task: to name up to 30 institutions they regard as being the best in the world in the field in which they work. In practice, the academic peer reviewers – who cannot vote for their own institution – choose about 20 universities each. To increase the statistical power of the survey, we aggregate data up to three years old, although we use only the most recent reply from anyone who has responded more than once. The result for 2008 is a survey of 6,354 people. With each person nominating an average of 20 universities, this means we have more than 120,000 data points. This academic review, the most significant element of the rankings, accounts for 40 per cent of an institution’s score. The other qualitative element,
accounting for 10 per cent, is a survey of major employers of graduates across the world and across a range of businesses. The people contacted are active recruiters. They are simply asked from which universities they like to recruit, and again this survey amalgamates up to three years of data. This year’s recruiter survey includes the opinion of 2,339 recruiters in every field, from mining to the media.
Quantitative measures
The other half of a university’s possible score in this ranking uses quantitative measures intended to capture quality in key university activities. The first of these, worth 20 per cent of a university’s score, is a measure of staff-tostudent ratio, which we believe tells us something about whether a university has enough people to teach the students it admits. QS gathers the data on staff and student numbers from a range of sources. Some come from national statistical bodies such as the Higher Education Statistics Agency in the UK and the National Center for Education Statistics in the US, but many of the data are collected from
universities directly, under a controlled definition of who may be counted as a staff member or student. Both figures are full-time equivalents. Our understanding of the information that makes up this column has been growing. One of the most spectacular climbs in our top 200, in which the University of Michigan rose from 38 in 2007 to 18 now, has been caused mainly by our use of more accurate staff and student numbers. A further 20 per cent of an institution’s score comes from a measure intended to assess the international esteem of its research. Here, we look at the number of citations to published papers from a university and divide it by the number of fulltime equivalent staff it employs. We use this approach rather than the more conventional measure of citations per paper because it reveals the density of creative brainpower on a campus. The citations data we use cover a five-year period and come from Scopus. We accept that all such data have some inherent biases, especially towards publishing in English. Our final two measures, each worth 5 per cent of a university’s score, are designed to tell us how serious an institution is about globalisation and how successful it is at attracting staff and students from around the world. This lets us see which institutions and nations are most committed to bringing in the best talent and which institutions people want to be at. The results obtained by each institution on all these measures are graded using a Z-score, with the top mark set at 100 to make the table more readable. We are always keen for ideas to improve these rankings, but we have considerable confidence in the strength of the methods we use today. l
viii Times Higher Education 9 October 2008
builders
World-class universities are a colossal national asset, but which country is best at developing them?
large university systems but lack high-profile institutions. The German system is now being reorganised to allow a small number of elite universities to compete on the world stage. Finally, the Economic measure acknowledges countries that have created a viable university system despite not having immense wealth. It awards five points for any university in the top 100, four for one between 101 and 200, and three, two or one respectively for each university between 201 and 300, 301 and 400, and 401 and 500. This points score is then divided by the country’s gross domestic product per capita. Here we see India and China in second and fourth place, with the Philippines and Indonesia in the top 10. Again, paradoxically, their scores on this measure may fall in future years as their economies grow, unless of course their universities emerge on the world scale more emphatically at the same time. Each of these measures has been converted to a Z-score in the same way as for the main table of the World University Rankings. We have then aggregated the four scores, giving each an equal weighting. This table shows the top 40. Below this point, the data become increasingly tenuous and we have chosen not to publish them.
H
ere we show one way of comparing the success of university systems at delivering higher education to people across the world. The table has been produced from data on more than 600 universities gathered by QS Quacquarelli Symonds, partners with Times Higher Education in the World University Rankings. While Times Higher Education publishes the top 200 institutions, this larger database allows us to reach deeper into national higher education systems around the world. This table of the top 40 systems includes those of countries such as Turkey that have no universities in the top 200. Each of the four sets of data we show here is designed to capture some aspect of the strength of a country in providing higher education. The first column, System, looks at the capacity of each country to produce world-class universities. It takes the number of universities that each country has in the top 600 and divides it by their average position. The more universities a country has, and the higher they appear in our ranking, the better the country does. This shows continental European nations such as Germany, France and Switzerland in a positive light. For example, France has four institutions in our top 200 but two are in our top 40.
The second column, Access, measures how good a country’s system is at getting students into university. It is calculated by taking each country’s number of full-time equivalent students at the top 500 universities and dividing it by the square root of its population – not its overall population, to avoid tiny nations such as Hong Kong and Singapore from artificially dominating the picture. Despite this decision, the sheer size of the Indian and Chinese populations pushes them down the table on this measure. This analysis also shows the very large Australian system to advantage. Also well placed here are the Italian universities, third on this measure behind the US and Australia. However, Italian higher education is persistently criticised for its bloated scale and the many years it takes some students to graduate. Paradoxically, reforms designed to alter the Italian system and push students through faster may reduce Italy’s strength on this measure in future years. Next comes Flagship. This is a straight measure of the position of the top institution in each country. Many nations, for example Taiwan, have a target of having at least one wellfunded national champion institution, and this measure rewards those that succeed. It also penalises some countries, such as Germany, that have
The final result shows that the United States is top in each category and also has the strongest university system overall. Any other result would have cast severe doubt on this exercise. While universities are vital for national economic development, they also cost money. The world’s largest economy is bound to be best placed to have the top institutions. In terms of attendance and access, university has long been an expectation for the massive US middle class. In terms of quality and international prestige, US universities dominate research and scholarship in every field of knowledge and are the world’s best resourced. And Harvard University has topped the Times Higher Education-QS World University Rankings in each of the five years we have published them. But this analysis also contains some surprises. Norway appears to have a weaker university system than South Africa or Brazil, despite its affluence and stable social system. It is especially weak on our Economic criterion. By contrast, South Korea is well placed here because of the high ranking of Seoul National University on our Flagship measure and the sheer number of Koreans attending university.
The top system
x Times Higher Education 9 October 2008
SYSTEM STRENGTH
System Score Rank Access Score Rank Flagship Score Rank Economic Score Rank Overall Score Rank 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40
United States United Kingdom Australia Germany Canada Japan France Netherlands South Korea Sweden Switzerland Italy Belgium New Zealand China Hong Kong Ireland Finland Taiwan Austria Denmark Thailand Israel India Singapore Malaysia Brazil Spain Greece South Africa Norway Indonesia Philippines Mexico Russia Czech Republic Poland Chile Argentina Turkey
SOURCE: QS QUACQUARELLI SYMONDS
100 98 92 95 92 91 87 91 71 75 83 73 75 66 78 80 65 62 58 54 66 47 65 63 73 51 46 61 36 34 47 35 38 31 42 21 31 27 40 39
1 2 5 3 4 6 8 7 16 13 9 14 12 18 11 10 19 22 24 25 17 28 20 21 15 26 29 23 34 36 27 35 33 38 30 41 37 39 31 32
100 94 97 87 93 80 89 83 81 82 71 96 77 82 32 61 79 75 74 83 59 60 52 17 61 60 31 35 79 44 65 38 18 45 22 74 54 40 2 26
1 4 2 7 5 13 6 9 12 11 20 3 16 10 36 24 15 17 18 8 27 26 30 44 23 25 37 35 14 32 22 34 41 31 40 19 29 33 48 39
100 100 99 95 98 98 98 95 96 94 98 76 93 94 96 98 96 91 87 88 96 81 91 82 97 68 75 77 74 78 78 54 62 83 77 61 50 66 75 26
1 2 3 15 5 4 8 14 12 16 6 30 18 17 12 7 11 19 22 21 10 25 20 24 9 34 31 29 33 26 26 38 36 23 28 37 39 35 32 41
100 98 88 93 86 89 82 76 71 64 62 64 63 62 96 49 45 50 47 41 45 77 54 99 22 66 75 51 26 59 23 84 88 45 54 20 38 40 49 50
1 3 7 5 9 6 11 13 16 19 21 18 20 22 4 30 33 28 31 35 34 12 24 2 40 17 14 26 38 23 39 10 8 32 25 42 37 36 29 27
100 98 94 92 92 90 89 86 79 79 79 77 77 76 75 72 71 70 66 66 66 66 65 65 63 61 57 56 54 54 53 53 52 51 49 44 43 43 41 35
Other measures
It is possible to imagine many other ways of measuring university systems. One would be to look at their economic effect. Governments all over the world are keen to find ways of getting more innovation and other commercial benefit from their universities. But direct means of trying to assess the strength of these links, perhaps by analysing the production of intellectual property via patents, would not work. The amount of such activity is too dependent on national economic conditions. In addition, the use of such criteria would favour
science and technology, as the arts generate few patentable discoveries. However, it may be possible in future years to use our data on subject areas to generate findings on the strength of specific countries in, say, science, or the arts and humanities. One fascinating comparison is between this snapshot and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development’s look at the leading nations in innovation. Its Science, Technology and Industry Scoreboard analyses the number of PhDs awarded by universities in developed nations. It agrees
with the result of our System measure, which shows that the smaller nations in Europe have universities that produce impressively high contributions to national development. Sweden, Switzerland and Portugal are top of the list, while Austria and Finland are fifth and seventh. On this measure, the US is only a little ahead of the OECD average, which is reduced by very low scores for India, China, Mexico and South Africa. In addition, the OECD measures how many graduates have joined its member nations’ workforce. Here the champion
is Canada, which on the measures we give here has the world’s fifth-strongest university system. In 2004, 44 per cent of the Canadian workforce were graduates, putting Canada just ahead of Japan at 42 per cent and the US in third place with 39 per cent. Despite its growing university system, the UK manages only 30 per cent, just below the OECD average. This is the first time we have presented this analysis. It should be regarded as an experimental sighting shot, and we welcome your ideas for improving it. l
9 October 2008 Times Higher Education xi
The subject
Institution Rank
ENGINEERING AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
Citations per paper Country
Asian institutions are learning from the big players that a narrow focus can bring rewards
O
ver the next four pages, we set out the 50 top performers in each of the main areas of academic achievement, starting here with technology, science and biomedicine. We capture their merits in two ways. One column gives their score in our academic peer review, while the other shows their citations per paper as measured over five years by Scopus. We have not amalgamated the two columns because every expert we have consulted advised us that the combined result would be meaningless. Instead, we list the institutions in order of academic peer opinion and show the citations per paper alongside. Unlike the main rankings table, we show citations per paper rather than citations per person because we do not have data on staff numbers in each subject area. But because we are looking at the same subjects across the world, the citations data ought to be consistent between them. To be included in these rankings, institutions must teach in at least two of these five areas. A look at our table for engineering and information technology suggests that this is a field in which focus brings rewards. The great technology hubs of the United States’ East and West coasts, the Massachusetts and the California institutes of technology, feature here in first and fourth position, with MIT in a commanding lead over second-placed Berkeley. Other technology specialists in prominent positions include Imperial College London, ETH
Zurich and the Tokyo Institute of Technology. European and US universities dominate this table, in part because of the research budgets of their countries’ companies and governments, but a number of emerging Asian nations have made developing their engineering expertise a priority. Both the National University of Singapore and Nanyang, a new technology university, are here from Singapore. From South Korea, the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology appears above Seoul National University. Harvard University appears in our peer review here in 19th place, its lowest showing anywhere in these rankings. But at 5.2 citations per paper, it has the world’s most highly cited engineering academics. Our academic peer reviewers around the world put MIT in top place for science as well as technology. But although some specialist science and technology institutions do well in this table, most of the top places are taken by large general universities that also figure prominently in our overall top 200, such as Berkeley, Harvard, Oxford, Cambridge, Princeton and Tokyo. Our table of the top players in biomedicine shows that Harvard Medical School, which carries out more research than many entire countries, is regarded as the world’s best biomedical institution by informed observers around the world. But Harvard does not have the most highly cited papers in the biomedical field. It is beaten comfortably by both MIT and Caltech. l
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22= 22= 24= 24= 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36= 36= 38= 38= 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49= 49= 49= 49=
Massachusetts Institute of Technology US 100.0 4.5 University of California, Berkeley US 93.9 5.0 Stanford University US 85.3 4.5 California Institute of Technology US 81.6 4.9 University of Cambridge UK 76.2 3.5 Carnegie Mellon University US 71.6 3.4 Imperial College London UK 70.9 2.9 Georgia Institute of Technology US 68.9 3.0 University of Tokyo Japan 67.4 2.1 University of Toronto Canada 66.0 3.5 National University of Singapore Singapore 64.5 2.9 Tsinghua University China 63.4 1.2 ETH Zurich Switzerland 63.1 3.6 University of Oxford UK 61.6 3.4 Princeton University US 61.5 4.3 University of California, Los Angeles US 61.4 4.3 Delft University of Technology Netherlands 60.4 2.5 McGill University Canada 60.1 2.5 Harvard University US 59.6 5.2 University of Illinois US 58.4 3.1 Tokyo Institute of Technology Japan 57.0 2.1 University of British Columbia Canada 56.8 2.8 Kyoto University Japan 56.8 2.1 Cornell University US 56.4 4.0 Hong Kong University of Science & Technology Hong Kong 56.4 2.8 Nanyang Technological University Singapore 55.2 2.1 University of New South Wales Australia 54.7 2.2 University of Melbourne Australia 54.4 2.8 Technion – Israel Institute of Technology Israel 54.1 2.7 University of Waterloo Canada 53.9 2.1 Ecole Polytechnique France 52.6 2.6 University of Texas at Austin US 52.0 3.2 Purdue University US 50.9 2.6 Korea Advanced Institute of Science & Technology South Korea 50.5 2.2 University of California, San Diego US 50.3 3.5 Australian National University Australia 49.9 2.6 Indian Institute of Technology Bombay India 49.9 1.8 University of Michigan US 49.2 3.5 Peking University China 49.2 1.7 Technical University of Munich Germany 48.7 2.8 University of Sydney Australia 48.0 2.3 Indian Institute of Technology Delhi India 47.7 1.7 Seoul National University South Korea 46.0 2.4 Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne Switzerland 45.2 3.4 University of Manchester UK 44.8 2.7 University of Alberta Canada 44.6 2.5 Monash University Australia 44.3 2.1 Shanghai Jiao Tong University China 43.8 1.1 National Taiwan University Taiwan 42.3 2.1 Osaka University Japan 42.3 1.9 University of Science and Technology of China China 42.3 1.6 Eindhoven University of Technology Netherlands 42.3 2.9
xii Times Higher Education 9 October 2008
SOURCE: QS QUACQUARELLI SYMONDS
Final
LIFE SCIENCES AND BIOMEDICINE
Citations per paper Institution Institution Country
NATURAL SCIENCES
Citations per paper Country
Rank
Rank
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11= 11= 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28= 28= 30 31 32= 32= 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50= 50=
Harvard University University of Cambridge Johns Hopkins University University of California, Berkeley University of Oxford Stanford University Yale University Massachusetts Institute of Technology University of California, San Diego McGill University Imperial College London University of California, Los Angeles University of Toronto University of British Columbia University of Tokyo California Institute of Technology National University of Singapore Cornell University Peking University Columbia University Duke University Princeton University Karolinska Institute Kyoto University University College London University of Melbourne University of Sydney University of California, Davis Washington University in St Louis Monash University University of Michigan University of Edinburgh University of Queensland King’s College London University of Chicago Osaka University Australian National University Uppsala University University of Hong Kong Seoul National University University of Pennsylvania University of Auckland Boston University University of Washington University of Alberta University of Bristol University of Wisconsin-Madison Heidelberg University Fudan University University of New South Wales Brown University
US 100.0 12.5 UK 87.1 10.4 US 84.7 10.2 US 83.7 10.4 UK 81.4 10.3 US 80.3 11.4 US 76.4 10.2 US 75.7 14.3 US 69.4 11.2 Canada 68.0 8.2 UK 65.4 8.9 US 65.4 9.8 Canada 64.1 8.0 Canada 61.8 7.2 Japan 60.5 6.9 US 59.5 13.7 Singapore 58.7 5.6 US 57.6 8.4 China 56.9 3.2 US 56.3 9.7 US 55.7 9.9 US 54.4 11.0 Sweden 54.0 7.9 Japan 53.1 6.9 UK 52.6 8.5 Australia 52.3 6.3 Australia 51.9 5.9 US 51.4 7.0 US 51.4 10.2 Australia 50.4 6.0 US 49.6 9.4 UK 48.9 8.5 Australia 48.9 6.0 UK 48.7 7.3 US 48.4 9.5 Japan 47.5 8.2 Australia 46.9 6.4 Sweden 45.6 8.1 Hong Kong 45.0 7.3 South Korea 44.9 4.7 US 44.8 9.4 New Zealand 43.9 5.8 US 43.2 9.7 US 43.1 9.9 Canada 41.9 6.3 UK 40.4 7.5 US 40.3 8.0 Germany 40.0 7.4 China 39.0 2.7 Australia 38.2 6.4 US 38.2 8.1
Final
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31= 31= 31= 34 35 36 37= 37= 39 40= 40= 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50
Massachusetts Institute of Technology US 100.0 8.2 University of California, Berkeley US 99.5 8.5 University of Cambridge UK 98.3 6.7 Harvard University US 96.1 10.1 University of Oxford UK 92.3 6.5 Princeton University US 91.1 10.1 California Institute of Technology US 90.7 11.7 Stanford University US 88.0 7.8 University of Toronto Canada 79.2 6.3 University of Tokyo Japan 77.2 5.3 Cornell University US 76.8 7.0 University of Chicago US 75.2 12.1 Kyoto University Japan 74.4 5.0 Imperial College London UK 74.3 6.2 ETH Zurich Switzerland 73.7 6.4 Peking University China 73.0 3.8 Yale University US 72.1 8.1 University of California, Los Angeles US 72.0 8.7 Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris France 68.5 6.2 University of British Columbia Canada 67.8 7.4 Australian National University Australia 66.1 5.8 McGill University Canada 63.1 4.8 Columbia University US 62.5 8.5 University of California, Santa Barbara US 61.9 7.8 Université Pierre-et-Marie-Curie, Paris VI France 60.0 5.2 Ecole Polytechnique France 59.6 5.4 University of Melbourne Australia 58.7 5.7 Tsinghua University China 57.1 2.3 Lomonosov Moscow State University Russia 56.6 2.2 University of California, San Diego US 55.6 6.2 National University of Singapore Singapore 55.5 4.5 Seoul National University South Korea 55.5 4.1 Technion – Israel Institute of Technology Israel 55.5 4.1 University of Texas at Austin US 54.9 6.5 University of Michigan US 54.8 6.6 University of Illinois US 53.4 6.3 Utrecht University Netherlands 52.4 5.5 University of Rome – La Sapienza Italy 52.4 3.8 University of New South Wales Australia 50.2 4.8 Osaka University Japan 49.5 4.2 Technical University of Munich Germany 49.5 6.1 University of Waterloo Canada 48.9 3.9 Heidelberg University Germany 48.3 6.5 University of Sydney Australia 48.1 4.7 Johns Hopkins University US 48.0 9.1 Korea Advanced Institute of Science & Technology South Korea 47.4 3.6 University of Pennsylvania US 45.9 8.6 Ludwig-Maximilians University, Munich Germany 45.8 6.1 University of Science and Technology of China China 45.5 3.6 National Taiwan University Taiwan 45.1 3.6
SOURCE: QS QUACQUARELLI SYMONDS
9 October 2008 Times Higher Education xiii
Final
SOCIAL SCIENCES
Institution Citations per paper Institution Country
ARTS AND HUMANITIES
Country
Rank
Rank
Final
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14= 14= 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31= 31= 33 34 35= 35= 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50
Harvard University University of California, Berkeley Stanford University London School of Economics University of Cambridge University of Oxford Yale University University of Chicago Princeton University Massachusetts Institute of Technology Columbia University University of British Columbia University of California, Los Angeles Australian National University McGill University University of Toronto Cornell University National University of Singapore University of Melbourne University of Michigan University of Tokyo University of Pennsylvania New York University Peking University Monash University Duke University University of Sydney University of New South Wales Northwestern University University of Auckland University of Copenhagen University College London Seoul National University University of Hong Kong Carnegie Mellon University University of Warwick Université Catholique de Louvain University of California, San Diego University of Queensland University of Wisconsin-Madison Johns Hopkins University Kyoto University University of Amsterdam Tsinghua University Katholieke Universiteit Leuven Boston University Georgetown University King’s College London Hebrew University of Jerusalem Maastricht University
US 100.0 4.6 US 91.6 3.4 US 82.6 4.9 UK 82.1 2.6 UK 81.8 3.1 UK 80.8 3.4 US 80.5 4.3 US 79.2 4.0 US 76.8 4.9 US 76.1 4.5 US 75.2 4.3 Canada 72.0 3.4 US 71.5 4.7 Australia 71.4 2.4 Canada 71.4 3.5 Canada 71.0 3.5 US 64.6 3.5 Singapore 61.9 2.4 Australia 61.7 2.6 US 60.9 4.2 Japan 59.9 1.8 US 58.4 4.2 US 58.2 3.8 China 57.8 2.2 Australia 57.6 2.0 US 53.2 5.1 Australia 51.4 2.3 Australia 50.9 3.0 US 50.6 3.6 New Zealand 49.7 2.5 Denmark 48.8 2.6 UK 48.8 4.1 South Korea 47.9 2.5 Hong Kong 47.5 2.3 US 47.2 4.8 UK 47.2 2.7 Belgium 46.2 2.7 US 45.9 5.1 Australia 45.7 2.8 US 45.4 3.9 US 45.1 4.3 Japan 44.8 1.8 Netherlands 44.7 3.6 China 44.1 1.5 Belgium 43.7 3.0 US 43.5 4.0 US 42.9 2.4 UK 42.4 5.7 Israel 42.3 2.4 Netherlands 42.2 3.7
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50
Harvard University US University of California, Berkeley US University of Oxford UK University of Cambridge UK Yale University US Princeton University US Columbia University US Stanford University US University of Chicago US University of California, Los Angeles US University of Toronto Canada Australian National University Australia McGill University Canada Cornell University US New York University US University of Melbourne Australia University of Sydney Australia University of British Columbia Canada University of Michigan US Massachusetts Institute of Technology US Duke University US Johns Hopkins University US Peking University China Free University of Berlin Germany Université Paris Sorbonne France University of Edinburgh UK Brown University US University of Tokyo Japan University College London UK National University of Singapore Singapore London School of Economics UK Trinity College Dublin Ireland Monash University Australia Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris France Leiden University Netherlands University of Amsterdam Netherlands Kyoto University Japan King’s College London UK University of Auckland New Zealand University of Pennsylvania US Hebrew University of Jerusalem Israel Katholieke Universiteit Leuven Belgium Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey US University of Vienna Austria University of Texas at Austin US University of Hong Kong Hong Kong Uppsala University Sweden Heidelberg University Germany Boston University US Humboldt University of Berlin Germany
100.0 93.1 91.3 89.1 86.2 81.8 81.7 80.3 79.3 77.3 74.3 74.0 70.8 67.2 64.2 62.8 62.6 61.9 61.5 60.5 58.4 57.1 56.4 55.2 55.0 54.8 54.3 54.1 53.6 53.1 52.9 52.8 52.5 51.3 51.0 50.7 50.4 50.1 49.7 49.4 48.1 47.8 47.4 47.1 46.3 45.7 45.6 45.4 45.2 44.9
xiv Times Higher Education 9 October 2008
SOURCE: QS QUACQUARELLI SYMONDS
Final
A relationship
hese tables show that Harvard University – home to a formidable business school as well as to major schools devoted to government and law – is regarded as the best institution in the world for the social sciences and for the arts and humanities. The University of California, Berkeley comes second in both. One outstanding result for the UK in the social sciences table is the fourth place for the London School of Economics,
T
Based on peer regard and impact, Anglophone institutions dominate the social sciences and arts
long the best-regarded social science institution outside the United States. In addition to being well liked by academics, the LSE is, as our table on page v shows, a magnet for top students from around the world and is regarded highly by employers. In the near future, the financial institutions of the City of London, which have long been the destination of choice for many LSE graduates, may be less frenzied recruiters than in
the past. But the LSE and its competitors are likely to remain attractive for the financially and academically ambitious. An interesting and contradictory story emerges from the citations per paper count for the social sciences. Here, the most cited papers come from King’s College London, which is 48th in the world on peer ranking in this area. It has 5.7 citations per paper, putting it well ahead of the LSE, its near neighbour, with a modest 2.6. Part of the explanation may be that King’s researchers work in areas such as health policy that have a publishing and citing pattern closer to medical research than to mainstream social science. But while physicists, neuroscientists and even economists live or die professionally on the basis of the journal articles they publish and the citations these papers attract, they do things a little differently in the arts and humanities. While journal
papers are becoming more important in these fields than they have been in the past, the sheer range and variety of scholarly outputs in the area defy the kind of statistical analysis that yields insights into excellence elsewhere in academe. This means that the Times Higher Education-QS approach of asking scholars around the world to name the best institutions in the fields in which they are expert is even more valuable when applied to the arts and humanities than to other fields. It answers directly the question: which universities have the best-regarded research in this broad range of subjects? As in previous years, this table asserts the power of Anglo-Saxon culture. It is led by Harvard and dominated by the Englishspeaking world. McGill University in Canada delivers some teaching in French; but Peking University, at 23 in the table, is the first to work mainly in a language other than English. l
9 October 2008 Times Higher Education xv
9 OCTOBER 2008
his is the fifth issue of the World University Rankings published by Times Higher Education and QS Quacquarelli Symonds. Those who have followed the rankings from their birth will notice that one thing has not changed. Harvard University has been ranked the best in the world for the fifth time in succession. Cynics might claim that its achievement is made simpler by its $35 billion (£19 billion) endowment. But there is more to academic success than money. Harvard has consistently spent its $3 billion annual budget wisely. But its lead is now a slender one, with Yale University scoring 99.8 to Harvard’s 100. These rankings were set up after a call to the UK Government for rankings that would reveal whether the UK’s fast-expanding university system was competitive on the world stage. Like previous editions, the tables we publish on pages iv-vii show that it is. US and UK universities take up the top 15 places this year. The US has 58 universities in the top 200, the same number as in 2007, and the UK has 29. This means, too, that these nations take the top two places in our analysis of the strength of university systems. This new measure, published for the first time this year on pages x-xi, is intended to gauge the success of different countries in delivering high-grade university education. Universities are funded in a wide range of ways. As might be expected for the world’s richest country, the US has a uniquely deep and wide range of ways in which money finds its way to universities. Americans accept that going to college is a huge expense to students and their parents. They also give generously to universities they
T
This year our rankings show not only the top institutions but also the strongest countries in higher education, says Martin Ince
may have left decades earlier. The US Government, charities and companies are big spenders on research, and individual states are great supporters of local university systems. In addition, the US is a major destination for international students. Many US universities are now rich enough to admit them on a needs-blind basis with scholarships. There are nine Australian universities in the top 200, three fewer than in 2007 but still an impressive total, and the Australian National University is the top institution outside the US and the UK. Here, a key factor seems to be Australia’s marketing across Asia. While Australian institutions are highly regarded by the world’s academics, some experts believe that their status may soon be imperilled by the rising quality and ambition of Chinese higher education. Both the Australian system and the Canadian, with 12 universities in our top 200, benefit from the use of English in teaching and in research publications.
in the round
The response
Scholars, students and ideas became internationally mobile centuries before the word “globalisation” gained currency in the 1960s. More importantly, universities around the world now have business models that involve foreign students, foreign staff and foreign money. At the same time, it is universally agreed that higher education and research are vital to national economic success and to the provision of public services such as healthcare. From London to Auckland, universities use their position in these rankings not just in advertising and publicity, but also in planning. In Asia in particular, where interest in ranking is greatest, many universities name gaining a place in our top 100 as one of their corporate ambitions. While everyone agrees that universities are vital to national prosperity, they cost money long before they earn any. The rich world dominates this top 200 table, especially North America, Western Europe and the growing economies of Asia. Nonetheless, universities in the developing world continue to appear in the rankings. South Africa’s only entrant last year, the University of Cape Town, has risen from 200th place to 179th. Brazil and Argentina have one entry each, at 196 and 197 respectively. Mexico’s
New entrants
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This supplement was written by Martin Ince, contributing editor of Times Higher Education and editor of the Times Higher Education-QS World University Rankings. He welcomes response to this publication, emailed to [email protected]. He wishes to thank Nunzio Quacquarelli and Ben Sowter of QS for their leading roles in this project, as well as the staff of our citations data supplier Scopus.
National Autonomous University has risen to 150th place. And from India, two branches of the Indian Institute of Technology, in Delhi and Bombay, are in the top 200. Despite such success stories, we recognise that measures designed to assess the qualities of the universities of Oxford and Berkeley may not be suited to assessing universities in the developing world. We are in the process of working to produce more appropriate measures. Times Higher Education and QS have worked to devise a ranking system that captures universities as a whole, with data derived from academic experts and from knowledgeable employers, as well as other measures relating to teaching, research and global appeal. Our longest-established counterpart, the Academic Ranking of World Universities, based at Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China, focuses mainly on scientific research. It is worth noting that the Times Higher Education-QS top 200 published here and the top 200 universities in the ARWU ranking, published in August 2008, have 145 institutions in common. The main differences are that our rankings do not count specialist medical institutions and the ARWU counts many middle-ranking US universities that are not visible internationally but that generate well-cited scientific research. This overlap suggests that both rankings are capturing a top group of world universities, even though there is variation between the positions allotted to individual institutions by the two systems. If a top group does exist, its members will naturally attract top academics and students, as well as the money to support the best scholarship and research. l
9 October 2008 Times Higher Education iii
THE WORLD’S TOP 200 UNIVERSITIES
Staff/student score Overall score 100.0 99.8 99.5 98.9 98.6 98.4 98.1 98.0 96.7 96.3 96.1 95.7 94.4 94.4 94.3 92.0 91.2 91.0 90.0 89.7 89.6 89.5 89.3 89.1 87.4 87.1 85.2 84.8 84.4 84.3 84.3 84.1 83.3 83.0 83.0 82.9 82.4 82.3 81.4 81.3 81.1 81.0 80.7 80.1 79.8 79.1 78.7 78.5 78.2 78.1 78.1 78.1 78.0 77.8 77.7 77.0 76.9 76.3 75.8 Citations per staff score International staff score 87 89 98 96 100 98 96 78 33 29 83 91 30 30 28 99 26 59 27 62 50 91 91 100 30 100 56 29 91 23 100 85 30 33 62 88 97 54 100 28 80 98 100 25 83 26 99 67 99 100 27 23 73 28 31 23 54 20 25 Recruiter review score Country Intl students score 81 71 95 96 93 100 100 83 94 89 79 82 66 68 76 91 87 51 40 95 97 85 82 94 26 92 58 69 84 36 100 74 61 61 93 36 93 96 97 56 46 86 78 28 91 59 99 69 76 100 36 37 32 57 36 24 81 29 36 Peer review score 100 100 100 100 100 99 96 100 100 100 97 100 97 99 100 100 100 99 100 100 95 93 96 95 99 94 92 93 91 100 100 83 88 100 80 100 99 100 86 96 100 85 95 90 97 91 98 88 90 63 100 97 88 64 93 97 87 98 84 2008 rank 2007 rank Institution Harvard University Yale University University of Cambridge University of Oxford California Institute of Technology Imperial College London University College London University of Chicago Massachusetts Institute of Technology Columbia University University of Pennsylvania Princeton University Duke University Johns Hopkins University Cornell University Australian National University Stanford University University of Michigan University of Tokyo McGill University Carnegie Mellon University King’s College London University of Edinburgh ETH Zurich (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology) Kyoto University University of Hong Kong Brown University Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris University of Manchester University of California, Los Angeles National University of Singapore University of Bristol Northwestern University University of British Columbia Ecole Polytechnique University of California, Berkeley University of Sydney University of Melbourne Hong Kong University of Science and Technology New York University University of Toronto Chinese University of Hong Kong University of Queensland Osaka University University of New South Wales Boston University Monash University University of Copenhagen Trinity College Dublin Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne Peking University Seoul National University University of Amsterdam Dartmouth College University of Wisconsin-Madison Tsinghua University Heidelberg University University of California, San Diego University of Washington
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13= 13= 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30= 30= 32 33 34= 34= 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50= 50= 50= 53 54 55 56 57 58 59
1 2= 2= 2= 7= 5 9 7= 10 11 14 6 13 15 20= 16 19 38= 17 12 20= 24 23 42 25 18 32 26 30 41 33= 37 29 33= 28 22 31 27 53= 49 45 38= 33= 46 44 47 43 93= 53= 117= 36 51= 48 71= 55= 40 60 58 55=
US US UK UK US UK UK US US US US US US US US Australia US US Japan Canada US UK UK Switzerland Japan Hong Kong US France UK US Singapore UK US Canada France US Australia Australia Hong Kong US Canada Hong Kong Australia Japan Australia US Australia Denmark Ireland Switzerland China South Korea Netherlands US US China Germany US US
100 100 100 100 74 100 99 99 100 99 98 98 98 78 99 93 100 99 94 97 97 98 99 82 87 90 83 72 100 98 98 99 97 93 96 100 97 100 90 96 94 84 97 69 99 85 99 59 96 71 97 65 77 93 79 90 59 58 54
96 100 99 100 98 100 100 98 90 98 88 75 100 100 90 82 67 85 98 99 82 89 82 56 80 86 64 68 82 48 39 82 78 69 100 24 55 59 60 83 18 80 49 93 35 66 52 100 68 93 84 87 80 88 48 94 81 35 62
100 98 89 85 100 83 89 91 100 94 99 100 94 100 96 74 100 84 78 51 79 70 70 99 91 59 99 99 56 100 75 74 82 67 58 100 54 56 72 54 100 57 63 70 68 73 37 45 42 77 34 54 61 95 89 31 58 100 99
SOURCE: QS QUACQUARELLI SYMONDS
iv Times Higher Education 9 October 2008
THE WORLD’S TOP 200 UNIVERSITIES
Staff/student score Overall score 75.7 75.3 75.0 74.9 74.8 74.5 74.2 74.0 73.9 73.8 73.3 73.2 73.1 73.0 72.9 72.3 72.2 72.1 71.8 71.8 71.8 71.5 71.5 71.3 71.3 71.3 71.0 70.2 70.0 69.9 69.8 69.6 69.6 69.5 69.5 69.3 69.2 69.1 68.8 68.6 68.6 68.5 68.4 68.4 68.3 68.2 68.1 68.1 68.0 67.9 67.6 67.4 67.2 67.1 66.7 66.6 66.4 66.2 66.2 Citations per staff score International staff score 24 25 43 70 74 94 100 45 97 92 60 37 52 95 92 82 81 100 80 54 42 67 95 39 92 92 90 72 68 28 21 51 83 70 51 48 24 42 39 60 87 57 22 71 71 35 87 99 95 18 26 61 38 31 17 64 49 27 79 Recruiter review score Country Peer review score 2008 rank Institution Intl students score 54 45 47 41 41 99 100 24 100 97 43 51 51 60 64 72 72 99 66 77 73 58 84 78 99 83 89 33 52 26 51 21 74 33 70 36 38 34 22 57 83 45 21 88 64 36 95 68 82 18 52 100 31 32 19 85 73 32 34 2007 rank 161= 90= 74= 71= 84 50 59 89 105 57 51= 73 61 83 97= 65= 68 69 63 67 92 114= 74= 97= 76 64 70 142= 106 96 85= 100 93= 128 65= 132= 110 77= 117= 77= 80= 82 151= 119 80= 90= 62 140= 177= 231= 102= 111 102= 85= 151= 85= 123 108 88
60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78= 78= 78= 81= 81= 83= 83= 83= 86 87 88 89 90 91= 91= 93= 93= 95 96 97 98 99= 99= 101 102= 102= 104 105 106= 106= 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117= 117=
Washington University in St Louis Tokyo Institute of Technology Emory University Uppsala University Leiden University University of Auckland London School of Economics Utrecht University University of Geneva University of Warwick University of Texas at Austin University of Illinois Katholieke Universiteit Leuven University of Glasgow University of Alberta University of Birmingham University of Sheffield Nanyang Technological University Delft University of Technology Technical University of Munich Rice University University of Aarhus University of York Georgia Institute of Technology University of St Andrews University of Western Australia University of Nottingham University of Minnesota Lund University University of California, Davis Case Western Reserve University University of Helsinki Université de Montréal Hebrew University of Jerusalem Ludwig-Maximilians University, Munich Korea Advanced Inst of Science & Technology University of Virginia University of Pittsburgh University of California, Santa Barbara Purdue University University of Southampton Vanderbilt University University of North Carolina University of Southern California University of Leeds Pennsylvania State University University of Adelaide University of Zurich University College Dublin Technion – Israel Institute of Technology Georgetown University Maastricht University Tohoku University Fudan University Tel Aviv University University of Vienna Université Catholique de Louvain McMaster University Queen’s University
US Japan US Sweden Netherlands New Zealand UK Netherlands Switzerland UK US US Belgium UK Canada UK UK Singapore Netherlands Germany US Denmark UK US UK Australia UK US Sweden US US Finland Canada Israel Germany South Korea US US US US UK US US US UK US Australia Switzerland Ireland Israel US Netherlands Japan China Israel Austria Belgium Canada Canada
64 77 62 91 87 95 88 89 69 83 95 94 92 72 91 73 69 87 78 73 62 76 62 78 59 72 72 79 82 84 60 88 89 89 84 76 66 62 88 85 63 53 74 65 72 78 72 76 72 84 69 51 63 89 85 89 85 86 77
55 76 67 60 61 94 100 66 36 100 95 67 83 78 48 94 97 87 87 59 55 38 93 83 95 88 98 54 68 46 42 43 36 25 45 53 93 40 50 82 90 84 87 73 98 79 89 38 91 58 94 72 49 91 47 67 63 42 82
100 70 96 43 35 36 59 62 58 60 26 43 34 67 56 57 68 47 66 86 76 72 77 22 74 52 64 38 45 42 95 55 36 35 69 61 61 95 21 34 61 100 61 49 57 39 39 21 67 48 65 80 98 49 24 10 19 26 45
95 87 91 85 97 42 26 72 98 38 69 72 72 69 55 65 60 38 49 57 95 74 57 99 62 65 46 94 68 96 88 71 70 89 51 79 82 79 99 60 61 60 71 80 50 81 61 99 33 79 62 72 63 39 98 67 74 91 55
SOURCE: QS QUACQUARELLI SYMONDS
9 October 2008 Times Higher Education v
THE WORLD’S TOP 200 UNIVERSITIES
Staff/student score Citations per staff score Overall score 66.1 65.9 65.8 65.4 65.4 65.3 65.3 65.2 65.1 64.8 64.6 64.1 63.9 63.8 63.4 63.4 63.4 63.1 62.6 62.6 62.5 62.4 62.3 62.0 61.9 61.8 61.8 61.5 61.2 61.2 61.0 60.9 60.7 60.4 60.3 60.1 59.8 59.8 59.6 59.5 59.4 59.1 59.0 58.7 58.7 58.5 58.4 58.3 58.3 58.1 58.0 57.9 57.9 57.9 57.8 57.6 57.6 57.6 57.5 57.5 International staff score 63 26 59 84 48 100 31 57 63 98 60 92 84 24 71 90 80 40 47 34 42 47 19 42 54 61 34 24 100 26 24 42 52 92 91 16 37 55 37 20 63 96 85 42 82 93 33 23 39 26 30 24 49 90 70 20 23 62 77 46 Recruiter review score Intl students score 71 32 41 62 39 88 25 50 81 42 54 79 80 29 77 56 67 43 68 40 56 56 13 97 18 34 20 30 43 67 90 15 29 93 80 14 31 51 49 31 31 92 82 60 79 48 34 14 52 35 80 29 45 80 98 24 13 48 95 60 Country Peer review score 53 62 73 60 68 73 87 58 71 57 86 60 62 80 61 45 54 68 85 77 79 41 76 41 76 63 75 69 68 64 66 81 79 49 44 64 64 61 40 59 67 55 48 64 40 76 65 79 69 56 54 70 70 52 59 54 74 52 37 67 2008 rank 2007 rank Institution University of Rochester Nagoya University Ohio State University Durham University University of Maryland University of Otago National Taiwan University Erasmus University Rotterdam Stony Brook University Eindhoven University of Technology University of Waterloo University of Sussex University of Basel University of California, Irvine Cardiff University Technical University of Denmark University of Liverpool University of Ghent Free University of Berlin Texas A&M University Humboldt University of Berlin Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon University of Science and Technology of China Wageningen University Nanjing University University of Groningen Shanghai Jiao Tong University University of Arizona City University of Hong Kong Freiburg University Université Pierre-et-Marie-Curie, Paris VI National Autonomous University of Mexico Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey University of Bath University of Aberdeen Indian Institute of Technology Delhi VU University Amsterdam Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen Tufts University Kyushu University University of Western Ontario Queen Mary, University of London University of Lausanne Chalmers University of Technology Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne Simon Fraser University University of Florida Chulalongkorn University Göttingen University University of Notre Dame University of Frankfurt am Main University of Calgary Indiana University Bloomington University of Lancaster KTH, Royal Institute of Technology Hokkaido University Indian Institute of Technology Bombay Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute University of Leicester University of Oslo
119 120 121 122= 122= 124= 124= 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133= 133= 133= 136 137= 137= 139 140 141 142 143 144= 144= 146 147= 147= 149 150 151 152 153 154 155= 155= 157 158 159 160 161 162= 162= 164 165 166= 166= 168 169 170= 170= 170= 173 174= 174= 174= 177= 177=
95 112= 120 109 79 114= 102= 163= 224 130= 112= 121 114= 140= 99 130= 101 124 146 122 126= 157 155= 148 125 173= 163= 134 149= 144 132= 192= 177= 145 137= 307= 304= 142= 159= 136 126= 149= 217 197= 129 139 135 223 168= 155= 209= 166= 137= 147 192= 151= 269 191 185= 188=
US Japan US UK US New Zealand Taiwan Netherlands US Netherlands Canada UK Switzerland US UK Denmark UK Belgium Germany US Germany France China Netherlands China Netherlands China US Hong Kong Germany France Mexico US UK UK India Netherlands Germany US Japan Canada UK Switzerland Sweden UK Canada US Thailand Germany US Germany Canada US UK Sweden Japan India US UK Norway
33 58 80 99 56 75 73 98 35 55 69 54 32 30 89 42 81 47 22 74 43 57 67 35 68 49 83 55 58 30 17 86 42 98 71 84 50 30 64 44 61 66 51 48 88 57 56 77 25 83 51 52 70 77 58 52 76 46 59 41
100 84 40 50 55 36 40 46 47 100 18 51 98 30 66 99 69 84 24 23 64 100 56 90 66 67 69 42 44 91 89 59 47 46 78 69 84 71 62 74 26 77 41 40 68 19 37 59 65 44 66 41 27 60 47 74 44 34 63 57
67 71 70 65 78 53 54 81 75 41 62 72 34 94 39 63 55 43 72 73 36 68 56 80 33 60 28 81 54 42 40 20 51 55 51 47 38 58 95 64 77 23 85 70 55 51 73 21 46 72 57 63 58 37 46 63 43 92 71 43
vi Times Higher Education 9 October 2008
SOURCE: QS QUACQUARELLI SYMONDS
THE WORLD’S TOP 200 UNIVERSITIES
Staff/student score Citations per staff score Overall score 57.4 57.3 57.3 57.1 56.9 56.9 56.8 56.4 56.4 56.1 56.1 55.9 55.8 55.4 55.4 55.3 55.1 55.0 54.8 54.8 54.5 54.3 54.3 International staff score 86 37 43 88 50 17 28 24 99 71 52 46 53 93 26 80 56 34 31 61 24 – 68 Recruiter review score Intl students score 82 20 30 100 96 25 74 38 93 85 19 89 26 45 28 77 59 19 34 40 30 92 50 Country Peer review score 61 2008 rank 2007 rank Institution University of Cape Town University of Colorado Waseda University Macquarie University Université Libre de Bruxelles Lomonosov Moscow State University Brandeis University University of Barcelona University of Canterbury Technical University of Berlin Pohang University of Science and Technology Stuttgart University University of Massachusetts, Amherst University of Bern University of Bologna University of Reading University of Antwerp University of São Paulo University of Buenos Aires Dalhousie University Kobe University University of Athens University of Twente
179 180= 180= 182 183= 183= 185 186= 186= 188= 188= 190 191 192= 192= 194 195 196 197= 197= 199 200= 200=
200= 107 180= 168= 154 231= 208 194 188= 203= 233 165 175= 214 173= 180= 187 175= 264= 221= 197= 248= 185=
South Africa US Japan Australia Belgium Russia US Spain New Zealand Germany South Korea Germany US Switzerland Italy UK Belgium Brazil Argentina Canada Japan Greece Netherlands
56
79 65 63 80 54 77 62 62 37 52 65 40 81 44 43 77 66 59 57 40 52
66 24 89 87 62 72 34 52 86 50 34 58 54 28 69 76 37 61 91 26 61 47 48
47
15 52 36 18 19 39 19 24 46 67 77 28 59 21 56 99 38 56 43 71 67 57
68 90 23 41 65 31 80 60 37 39 99 28 68 83 40 49 37 32 19 69 36 72 51
SOURCE: QS QUACQUARELLI SYMONDS
9 October 2008 Times Higher Education vii
Strong
Our rankings are built on quantitative data and informed opinion from recruiters and academics
he Times Higher Education-QS World University Rankings aim to capture the essence of a worldclass university. This involves quality teaching and research, both of which we attempt to measure. Because a global institution will also be a magnet for academic talent, we analyse institutions’ abilities to attract staff and students from beyond their own shores. But we also consider the informed opinion of two groups – university academics and major recruiters of graduates – that have a unique insight into institutions’ strengths. This means that our ranking of the world’s top 200 universities is a compound index that uses qualitative data derived from surveys alongside quantitative data on topics such as staff and student numbers and scholarly citations. The 2008 rankings use much the same method as in 2007 but with more and better data. For us to consider a university, it must undertake work in at least two of the major academic fields: the natural sciences; biomedicine; engineering and information technology; the social sciences; and the arts and humanities. It must also teach undergraduates. This means that these rankings do not include many excellent specialist institutions, mainly medical colleges and business schools. But many universities that do not teach a full range of subjects, principally specialist science and technology colleges, show up well here. A fundamental tenet of this ranking is that academics know
Lecturer Senior lecturer
Research specialist Administrator/ Functional manager Research assistant Teaching assistant Admissions officer Librarian/ Library assistant Other President/ Vice-chancellor Vice-president/ Deputy vice-chancellor Senior administrator Head of department
SOURCE: QS QUACQUARELLI SYMONDS
T
Professor/ Associate professor
which are the best universities. Getting their opinion has been the most time-consuming part of the exercise and is also its most distinctive feature. As the chart shows, the academics we consult are spread around the world and range from lecturers to university presidents. They have to enter our survey from an academic site (.edu or an equivalent), and they have a simple task: to name up to 30 institutions they regard as being the best in the world in the field in which they work. In practice, the academic peer reviewers – who cannot vote for their own institution – choose about 20 universities each. To increase the statistical power of the survey, we aggregate data up to three years old, although we use only the most recent reply from anyone who has responded more than once. The result for 2008 is a survey of 6,354 people. With each person nominating an average of 20 universities, this means we have more than 120,000 data points. This academic review, the most significant element of the rankings, accounts for 40 per cent of an institution’s score. The other qualitative element,
accounting for 10 per cent, is a survey of major employers of graduates across the world and across a range of businesses. The people contacted are active recruiters. They are simply asked from which universities they like to recruit, and again this survey amalgamates up to three years of data. This year’s recruiter survey includes the opinion of 2,339 recruiters in every field, from mining to the media.
Quantitative measures
The other half of a university’s possible score in this ranking uses quantitative measures intended to capture quality in key university activities. The first of these, worth 20 per cent of a university’s score, is a measure of staff-tostudent ratio, which we believe tells us something about whether a university has enough people to teach the students it admits. QS gathers the data on staff and student numbers from a range of sources. Some come from national statistical bodies such as the Higher Education Statistics Agency in the UK and the National Center for Education Statistics in the US, but many of the data are collected from
universities directly, under a controlled definition of who may be counted as a staff member or student. Both figures are full-time equivalents. Our understanding of the information that makes up this column has been growing. One of the most spectacular climbs in our top 200, in which the University of Michigan rose from 38 in 2007 to 18 now, has been caused mainly by our use of more accurate staff and student numbers. A further 20 per cent of an institution’s score comes from a measure intended to assess the international esteem of its research. Here, we look at the number of citations to published papers from a university and divide it by the number of fulltime equivalent staff it employs. We use this approach rather than the more conventional measure of citations per paper because it reveals the density of creative brainpower on a campus. The citations data we use cover a five-year period and come from Scopus. We accept that all such data have some inherent biases, especially towards publishing in English. Our final two measures, each worth 5 per cent of a university’s score, are designed to tell us how serious an institution is about globalisation and how successful it is at attracting staff and students from around the world. This lets us see which institutions and nations are most committed to bringing in the best talent and which institutions people want to be at. The results obtained by each institution on all these measures are graded using a Z-score, with the top mark set at 100 to make the table more readable. We are always keen for ideas to improve these rankings, but we have considerable confidence in the strength of the methods we use today. l
viii Times Higher Education 9 October 2008
builders
World-class universities are a colossal national asset, but which country is best at developing them?
large university systems but lack high-profile institutions. The German system is now being reorganised to allow a small number of elite universities to compete on the world stage. Finally, the Economic measure acknowledges countries that have created a viable university system despite not having immense wealth. It awards five points for any university in the top 100, four for one between 101 and 200, and three, two or one respectively for each university between 201 and 300, 301 and 400, and 401 and 500. This points score is then divided by the country’s gross domestic product per capita. Here we see India and China in second and fourth place, with the Philippines and Indonesia in the top 10. Again, paradoxically, their scores on this measure may fall in future years as their economies grow, unless of course their universities emerge on the world scale more emphatically at the same time. Each of these measures has been converted to a Z-score in the same way as for the main table of the World University Rankings. We have then aggregated the four scores, giving each an equal weighting. This table shows the top 40. Below this point, the data become increasingly tenuous and we have chosen not to publish them.
H
ere we show one way of comparing the success of university systems at delivering higher education to people across the world. The table has been produced from data on more than 600 universities gathered by QS Quacquarelli Symonds, partners with Times Higher Education in the World University Rankings. While Times Higher Education publishes the top 200 institutions, this larger database allows us to reach deeper into national higher education systems around the world. This table of the top 40 systems includes those of countries such as Turkey that have no universities in the top 200. Each of the four sets of data we show here is designed to capture some aspect of the strength of a country in providing higher education. The first column, System, looks at the capacity of each country to produce world-class universities. It takes the number of universities that each country has in the top 600 and divides it by their average position. The more universities a country has, and the higher they appear in our ranking, the better the country does. This shows continental European nations such as Germany, France and Switzerland in a positive light. For example, France has four institutions in our top 200 but two are in our top 40.
The second column, Access, measures how good a country’s system is at getting students into university. It is calculated by taking each country’s number of full-time equivalent students at the top 500 universities and dividing it by the square root of its population – not its overall population, to avoid tiny nations such as Hong Kong and Singapore from artificially dominating the picture. Despite this decision, the sheer size of the Indian and Chinese populations pushes them down the table on this measure. This analysis also shows the very large Australian system to advantage. Also well placed here are the Italian universities, third on this measure behind the US and Australia. However, Italian higher education is persistently criticised for its bloated scale and the many years it takes some students to graduate. Paradoxically, reforms designed to alter the Italian system and push students through faster may reduce Italy’s strength on this measure in future years. Next comes Flagship. This is a straight measure of the position of the top institution in each country. Many nations, for example Taiwan, have a target of having at least one wellfunded national champion institution, and this measure rewards those that succeed. It also penalises some countries, such as Germany, that have
The final result shows that the United States is top in each category and also has the strongest university system overall. Any other result would have cast severe doubt on this exercise. While universities are vital for national economic development, they also cost money. The world’s largest economy is bound to be best placed to have the top institutions. In terms of attendance and access, university has long been an expectation for the massive US middle class. In terms of quality and international prestige, US universities dominate research and scholarship in every field of knowledge and are the world’s best resourced. And Harvard University has topped the Times Higher Education-QS World University Rankings in each of the five years we have published them. But this analysis also contains some surprises. Norway appears to have a weaker university system than South Africa or Brazil, despite its affluence and stable social system. It is especially weak on our Economic criterion. By contrast, South Korea is well placed here because of the high ranking of Seoul National University on our Flagship measure and the sheer number of Koreans attending university.
The top system
x Times Higher Education 9 October 2008
SYSTEM STRENGTH
System Score Rank Access Score Rank Flagship Score Rank Economic Score Rank Overall Score Rank 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40
United States United Kingdom Australia Germany Canada Japan France Netherlands South Korea Sweden Switzerland Italy Belgium New Zealand China Hong Kong Ireland Finland Taiwan Austria Denmark Thailand Israel India Singapore Malaysia Brazil Spain Greece South Africa Norway Indonesia Philippines Mexico Russia Czech Republic Poland Chile Argentina Turkey
SOURCE: QS QUACQUARELLI SYMONDS
100 98 92 95 92 91 87 91 71 75 83 73 75 66 78 80 65 62 58 54 66 47 65 63 73 51 46 61 36 34 47 35 38 31 42 21 31 27 40 39
1 2 5 3 4 6 8 7 16 13 9 14 12 18 11 10 19 22 24 25 17 28 20 21 15 26 29 23 34 36 27 35 33 38 30 41 37 39 31 32
100 94 97 87 93 80 89 83 81 82 71 96 77 82 32 61 79 75 74 83 59 60 52 17 61 60 31 35 79 44 65 38 18 45 22 74 54 40 2 26
1 4 2 7 5 13 6 9 12 11 20 3 16 10 36 24 15 17 18 8 27 26 30 44 23 25 37 35 14 32 22 34 41 31 40 19 29 33 48 39
100 100 99 95 98 98 98 95 96 94 98 76 93 94 96 98 96 91 87 88 96 81 91 82 97 68 75 77 74 78 78 54 62 83 77 61 50 66 75 26
1 2 3 15 5 4 8 14 12 16 6 30 18 17 12 7 11 19 22 21 10 25 20 24 9 34 31 29 33 26 26 38 36 23 28 37 39 35 32 41
100 98 88 93 86 89 82 76 71 64 62 64 63 62 96 49 45 50 47 41 45 77 54 99 22 66 75 51 26 59 23 84 88 45 54 20 38 40 49 50
1 3 7 5 9 6 11 13 16 19 21 18 20 22 4 30 33 28 31 35 34 12 24 2 40 17 14 26 38 23 39 10 8 32 25 42 37 36 29 27
100 98 94 92 92 90 89 86 79 79 79 77 77 76 75 72 71 70 66 66 66 66 65 65 63 61 57 56 54 54 53 53 52 51 49 44 43 43 41 35
Other measures
It is possible to imagine many other ways of measuring university systems. One would be to look at their economic effect. Governments all over the world are keen to find ways of getting more innovation and other commercial benefit from their universities. But direct means of trying to assess the strength of these links, perhaps by analysing the production of intellectual property via patents, would not work. The amount of such activity is too dependent on national economic conditions. In addition, the use of such criteria would favour
science and technology, as the arts generate few patentable discoveries. However, it may be possible in future years to use our data on subject areas to generate findings on the strength of specific countries in, say, science, or the arts and humanities. One fascinating comparison is between this snapshot and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development’s look at the leading nations in innovation. Its Science, Technology and Industry Scoreboard analyses the number of PhDs awarded by universities in developed nations. It agrees
with the result of our System measure, which shows that the smaller nations in Europe have universities that produce impressively high contributions to national development. Sweden, Switzerland and Portugal are top of the list, while Austria and Finland are fifth and seventh. On this measure, the US is only a little ahead of the OECD average, which is reduced by very low scores for India, China, Mexico and South Africa. In addition, the OECD measures how many graduates have joined its member nations’ workforce. Here the champion
is Canada, which on the measures we give here has the world’s fifth-strongest university system. In 2004, 44 per cent of the Canadian workforce were graduates, putting Canada just ahead of Japan at 42 per cent and the US in third place with 39 per cent. Despite its growing university system, the UK manages only 30 per cent, just below the OECD average. This is the first time we have presented this analysis. It should be regarded as an experimental sighting shot, and we welcome your ideas for improving it. l
9 October 2008 Times Higher Education xi
The subject
Institution Rank
ENGINEERING AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
Citations per paper Country
Asian institutions are learning from the big players that a narrow focus can bring rewards
O
ver the next four pages, we set out the 50 top performers in each of the main areas of academic achievement, starting here with technology, science and biomedicine. We capture their merits in two ways. One column gives their score in our academic peer review, while the other shows their citations per paper as measured over five years by Scopus. We have not amalgamated the two columns because every expert we have consulted advised us that the combined result would be meaningless. Instead, we list the institutions in order of academic peer opinion and show the citations per paper alongside. Unlike the main rankings table, we show citations per paper rather than citations per person because we do not have data on staff numbers in each subject area. But because we are looking at the same subjects across the world, the citations data ought to be consistent between them. To be included in these rankings, institutions must teach in at least two of these five areas. A look at our table for engineering and information technology suggests that this is a field in which focus brings rewards. The great technology hubs of the United States’ East and West coasts, the Massachusetts and the California institutes of technology, feature here in first and fourth position, with MIT in a commanding lead over second-placed Berkeley. Other technology specialists in prominent positions include Imperial College London, ETH
Zurich and the Tokyo Institute of Technology. European and US universities dominate this table, in part because of the research budgets of their countries’ companies and governments, but a number of emerging Asian nations have made developing their engineering expertise a priority. Both the National University of Singapore and Nanyang, a new technology university, are here from Singapore. From South Korea, the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology appears above Seoul National University. Harvard University appears in our peer review here in 19th place, its lowest showing anywhere in these rankings. But at 5.2 citations per paper, it has the world’s most highly cited engineering academics. Our academic peer reviewers around the world put MIT in top place for science as well as technology. But although some specialist science and technology institutions do well in this table, most of the top places are taken by large general universities that also figure prominently in our overall top 200, such as Berkeley, Harvard, Oxford, Cambridge, Princeton and Tokyo. Our table of the top players in biomedicine shows that Harvard Medical School, which carries out more research than many entire countries, is regarded as the world’s best biomedical institution by informed observers around the world. But Harvard does not have the most highly cited papers in the biomedical field. It is beaten comfortably by both MIT and Caltech. l
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22= 22= 24= 24= 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36= 36= 38= 38= 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49= 49= 49= 49=
Massachusetts Institute of Technology US 100.0 4.5 University of California, Berkeley US 93.9 5.0 Stanford University US 85.3 4.5 California Institute of Technology US 81.6 4.9 University of Cambridge UK 76.2 3.5 Carnegie Mellon University US 71.6 3.4 Imperial College London UK 70.9 2.9 Georgia Institute of Technology US 68.9 3.0 University of Tokyo Japan 67.4 2.1 University of Toronto Canada 66.0 3.5 National University of Singapore Singapore 64.5 2.9 Tsinghua University China 63.4 1.2 ETH Zurich Switzerland 63.1 3.6 University of Oxford UK 61.6 3.4 Princeton University US 61.5 4.3 University of California, Los Angeles US 61.4 4.3 Delft University of Technology Netherlands 60.4 2.5 McGill University Canada 60.1 2.5 Harvard University US 59.6 5.2 University of Illinois US 58.4 3.1 Tokyo Institute of Technology Japan 57.0 2.1 University of British Columbia Canada 56.8 2.8 Kyoto University Japan 56.8 2.1 Cornell University US 56.4 4.0 Hong Kong University of Science & Technology Hong Kong 56.4 2.8 Nanyang Technological University Singapore 55.2 2.1 University of New South Wales Australia 54.7 2.2 University of Melbourne Australia 54.4 2.8 Technion – Israel Institute of Technology Israel 54.1 2.7 University of Waterloo Canada 53.9 2.1 Ecole Polytechnique France 52.6 2.6 University of Texas at Austin US 52.0 3.2 Purdue University US 50.9 2.6 Korea Advanced Institute of Science & Technology South Korea 50.5 2.2 University of California, San Diego US 50.3 3.5 Australian National University Australia 49.9 2.6 Indian Institute of Technology Bombay India 49.9 1.8 University of Michigan US 49.2 3.5 Peking University China 49.2 1.7 Technical University of Munich Germany 48.7 2.8 University of Sydney Australia 48.0 2.3 Indian Institute of Technology Delhi India 47.7 1.7 Seoul National University South Korea 46.0 2.4 Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne Switzerland 45.2 3.4 University of Manchester UK 44.8 2.7 University of Alberta Canada 44.6 2.5 Monash University Australia 44.3 2.1 Shanghai Jiao Tong University China 43.8 1.1 National Taiwan University Taiwan 42.3 2.1 Osaka University Japan 42.3 1.9 University of Science and Technology of China China 42.3 1.6 Eindhoven University of Technology Netherlands 42.3 2.9
xii Times Higher Education 9 October 2008
SOURCE: QS QUACQUARELLI SYMONDS
Final
LIFE SCIENCES AND BIOMEDICINE
Citations per paper Institution Institution Country
NATURAL SCIENCES
Citations per paper Country
Rank
Rank
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11= 11= 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28= 28= 30 31 32= 32= 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50= 50=
Harvard University University of Cambridge Johns Hopkins University University of California, Berkeley University of Oxford Stanford University Yale University Massachusetts Institute of Technology University of California, San Diego McGill University Imperial College London University of California, Los Angeles University of Toronto University of British Columbia University of Tokyo California Institute of Technology National University of Singapore Cornell University Peking University Columbia University Duke University Princeton University Karolinska Institute Kyoto University University College London University of Melbourne University of Sydney University of California, Davis Washington University in St Louis Monash University University of Michigan University of Edinburgh University of Queensland King’s College London University of Chicago Osaka University Australian National University Uppsala University University of Hong Kong Seoul National University University of Pennsylvania University of Auckland Boston University University of Washington University of Alberta University of Bristol University of Wisconsin-Madison Heidelberg University Fudan University University of New South Wales Brown University
US 100.0 12.5 UK 87.1 10.4 US 84.7 10.2 US 83.7 10.4 UK 81.4 10.3 US 80.3 11.4 US 76.4 10.2 US 75.7 14.3 US 69.4 11.2 Canada 68.0 8.2 UK 65.4 8.9 US 65.4 9.8 Canada 64.1 8.0 Canada 61.8 7.2 Japan 60.5 6.9 US 59.5 13.7 Singapore 58.7 5.6 US 57.6 8.4 China 56.9 3.2 US 56.3 9.7 US 55.7 9.9 US 54.4 11.0 Sweden 54.0 7.9 Japan 53.1 6.9 UK 52.6 8.5 Australia 52.3 6.3 Australia 51.9 5.9 US 51.4 7.0 US 51.4 10.2 Australia 50.4 6.0 US 49.6 9.4 UK 48.9 8.5 Australia 48.9 6.0 UK 48.7 7.3 US 48.4 9.5 Japan 47.5 8.2 Australia 46.9 6.4 Sweden 45.6 8.1 Hong Kong 45.0 7.3 South Korea 44.9 4.7 US 44.8 9.4 New Zealand 43.9 5.8 US 43.2 9.7 US 43.1 9.9 Canada 41.9 6.3 UK 40.4 7.5 US 40.3 8.0 Germany 40.0 7.4 China 39.0 2.7 Australia 38.2 6.4 US 38.2 8.1
Final
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31= 31= 31= 34 35 36 37= 37= 39 40= 40= 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50
Massachusetts Institute of Technology US 100.0 8.2 University of California, Berkeley US 99.5 8.5 University of Cambridge UK 98.3 6.7 Harvard University US 96.1 10.1 University of Oxford UK 92.3 6.5 Princeton University US 91.1 10.1 California Institute of Technology US 90.7 11.7 Stanford University US 88.0 7.8 University of Toronto Canada 79.2 6.3 University of Tokyo Japan 77.2 5.3 Cornell University US 76.8 7.0 University of Chicago US 75.2 12.1 Kyoto University Japan 74.4 5.0 Imperial College London UK 74.3 6.2 ETH Zurich Switzerland 73.7 6.4 Peking University China 73.0 3.8 Yale University US 72.1 8.1 University of California, Los Angeles US 72.0 8.7 Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris France 68.5 6.2 University of British Columbia Canada 67.8 7.4 Australian National University Australia 66.1 5.8 McGill University Canada 63.1 4.8 Columbia University US 62.5 8.5 University of California, Santa Barbara US 61.9 7.8 Université Pierre-et-Marie-Curie, Paris VI France 60.0 5.2 Ecole Polytechnique France 59.6 5.4 University of Melbourne Australia 58.7 5.7 Tsinghua University China 57.1 2.3 Lomonosov Moscow State University Russia 56.6 2.2 University of California, San Diego US 55.6 6.2 National University of Singapore Singapore 55.5 4.5 Seoul National University South Korea 55.5 4.1 Technion – Israel Institute of Technology Israel 55.5 4.1 University of Texas at Austin US 54.9 6.5 University of Michigan US 54.8 6.6 University of Illinois US 53.4 6.3 Utrecht University Netherlands 52.4 5.5 University of Rome – La Sapienza Italy 52.4 3.8 University of New South Wales Australia 50.2 4.8 Osaka University Japan 49.5 4.2 Technical University of Munich Germany 49.5 6.1 University of Waterloo Canada 48.9 3.9 Heidelberg University Germany 48.3 6.5 University of Sydney Australia 48.1 4.7 Johns Hopkins University US 48.0 9.1 Korea Advanced Institute of Science & Technology South Korea 47.4 3.6 University of Pennsylvania US 45.9 8.6 Ludwig-Maximilians University, Munich Germany 45.8 6.1 University of Science and Technology of China China 45.5 3.6 National Taiwan University Taiwan 45.1 3.6
SOURCE: QS QUACQUARELLI SYMONDS
9 October 2008 Times Higher Education xiii
Final
SOCIAL SCIENCES
Institution Citations per paper Institution Country
ARTS AND HUMANITIES
Country
Rank
Rank
Final
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14= 14= 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31= 31= 33 34 35= 35= 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50
Harvard University University of California, Berkeley Stanford University London School of Economics University of Cambridge University of Oxford Yale University University of Chicago Princeton University Massachusetts Institute of Technology Columbia University University of British Columbia University of California, Los Angeles Australian National University McGill University University of Toronto Cornell University National University of Singapore University of Melbourne University of Michigan University of Tokyo University of Pennsylvania New York University Peking University Monash University Duke University University of Sydney University of New South Wales Northwestern University University of Auckland University of Copenhagen University College London Seoul National University University of Hong Kong Carnegie Mellon University University of Warwick Université Catholique de Louvain University of California, San Diego University of Queensland University of Wisconsin-Madison Johns Hopkins University Kyoto University University of Amsterdam Tsinghua University Katholieke Universiteit Leuven Boston University Georgetown University King’s College London Hebrew University of Jerusalem Maastricht University
US 100.0 4.6 US 91.6 3.4 US 82.6 4.9 UK 82.1 2.6 UK 81.8 3.1 UK 80.8 3.4 US 80.5 4.3 US 79.2 4.0 US 76.8 4.9 US 76.1 4.5 US 75.2 4.3 Canada 72.0 3.4 US 71.5 4.7 Australia 71.4 2.4 Canada 71.4 3.5 Canada 71.0 3.5 US 64.6 3.5 Singapore 61.9 2.4 Australia 61.7 2.6 US 60.9 4.2 Japan 59.9 1.8 US 58.4 4.2 US 58.2 3.8 China 57.8 2.2 Australia 57.6 2.0 US 53.2 5.1 Australia 51.4 2.3 Australia 50.9 3.0 US 50.6 3.6 New Zealand 49.7 2.5 Denmark 48.8 2.6 UK 48.8 4.1 South Korea 47.9 2.5 Hong Kong 47.5 2.3 US 47.2 4.8 UK 47.2 2.7 Belgium 46.2 2.7 US 45.9 5.1 Australia 45.7 2.8 US 45.4 3.9 US 45.1 4.3 Japan 44.8 1.8 Netherlands 44.7 3.6 China 44.1 1.5 Belgium 43.7 3.0 US 43.5 4.0 US 42.9 2.4 UK 42.4 5.7 Israel 42.3 2.4 Netherlands 42.2 3.7
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50
Harvard University US University of California, Berkeley US University of Oxford UK University of Cambridge UK Yale University US Princeton University US Columbia University US Stanford University US University of Chicago US University of California, Los Angeles US University of Toronto Canada Australian National University Australia McGill University Canada Cornell University US New York University US University of Melbourne Australia University of Sydney Australia University of British Columbia Canada University of Michigan US Massachusetts Institute of Technology US Duke University US Johns Hopkins University US Peking University China Free University of Berlin Germany Université Paris Sorbonne France University of Edinburgh UK Brown University US University of Tokyo Japan University College London UK National University of Singapore Singapore London School of Economics UK Trinity College Dublin Ireland Monash University Australia Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris France Leiden University Netherlands University of Amsterdam Netherlands Kyoto University Japan King’s College London UK University of Auckland New Zealand University of Pennsylvania US Hebrew University of Jerusalem Israel Katholieke Universiteit Leuven Belgium Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey US University of Vienna Austria University of Texas at Austin US University of Hong Kong Hong Kong Uppsala University Sweden Heidelberg University Germany Boston University US Humboldt University of Berlin Germany
100.0 93.1 91.3 89.1 86.2 81.8 81.7 80.3 79.3 77.3 74.3 74.0 70.8 67.2 64.2 62.8 62.6 61.9 61.5 60.5 58.4 57.1 56.4 55.2 55.0 54.8 54.3 54.1 53.6 53.1 52.9 52.8 52.5 51.3 51.0 50.7 50.4 50.1 49.7 49.4 48.1 47.8 47.4 47.1 46.3 45.7 45.6 45.4 45.2 44.9
xiv Times Higher Education 9 October 2008
SOURCE: QS QUACQUARELLI SYMONDS
Final
A relationship
hese tables show that Harvard University – home to a formidable business school as well as to major schools devoted to government and law – is regarded as the best institution in the world for the social sciences and for the arts and humanities. The University of California, Berkeley comes second in both. One outstanding result for the UK in the social sciences table is the fourth place for the London School of Economics,
T
Based on peer regard and impact, Anglophone institutions dominate the social sciences and arts
long the best-regarded social science institution outside the United States. In addition to being well liked by academics, the LSE is, as our table on page v shows, a magnet for top students from around the world and is regarded highly by employers. In the near future, the financial institutions of the City of London, which have long been the destination of choice for many LSE graduates, may be less frenzied recruiters than in
the past. But the LSE and its competitors are likely to remain attractive for the financially and academically ambitious. An interesting and contradictory story emerges from the citations per paper count for the social sciences. Here, the most cited papers come from King’s College London, which is 48th in the world on peer ranking in this area. It has 5.7 citations per paper, putting it well ahead of the LSE, its near neighbour, with a modest 2.6. Part of the explanation may be that King’s researchers work in areas such as health policy that have a publishing and citing pattern closer to medical research than to mainstream social science. But while physicists, neuroscientists and even economists live or die professionally on the basis of the journal articles they publish and the citations these papers attract, they do things a little differently in the arts and humanities. While journal
papers are becoming more important in these fields than they have been in the past, the sheer range and variety of scholarly outputs in the area defy the kind of statistical analysis that yields insights into excellence elsewhere in academe. This means that the Times Higher Education-QS approach of asking scholars around the world to name the best institutions in the fields in which they are expert is even more valuable when applied to the arts and humanities than to other fields. It answers directly the question: which universities have the best-regarded research in this broad range of subjects? As in previous years, this table asserts the power of Anglo-Saxon culture. It is led by Harvard and dominated by the Englishspeaking world. McGill University in Canada delivers some teaching in French; but Peking University, at 23 in the table, is the first to work mainly in a language other than English. l
9 October 2008 Times Higher Education xv
