World Party - the latest THE world university rankings

The latest league table of the season is out with the publication of the all new THE World University Rankings 2018. And it’s glory for the UK as two of our most ancient of universities bag the top two places for the first time ever. The full details can be found here but it is interesting to note the narrative of at least partial Western decline (leaving aside the Oxford and Cambridge result):

The headlines are:

Oxford and Cambridge are the world’s top two universities for the first time ever
Brexit poses a risk to the global performance of the UK’s leading universities
European institutions occupy half of top 200 places but face a challenge from Asia

In more detail, the decline of the UK is at least partly underway:

the results underline the risk Brexit may pose to the global performance of the UK’s leading universities. Almost a quarter of the research funding from competitive grants to the University of Cambridge comes from the EU, while the proportion at the University of Oxford is about a fifth. In addition, there are signs that UK universities are already starting to suffer from the Brexit vote. The number of EU applicants looking to study on full-time undergraduate courses in the UK declined by five per cent since last year.

The findings also suggest a widening gulf between the UK’s super elite institutions and other universities. While institutions in the golden triangle of Oxford, Cambridge and London have remained steady – Imperial College London remains at eighth, UCL is down just one place at 16th, and LSE remains at 25th, for example – several of the lower-ranked universities have declined.

The University of Warwick has dropped nine places to 91st and the University of St Andrews plummeted 33 places to joint 143rd, for example. Overall, just over half of the UK’s top-200 representatives (16 out of 31) have dropped places.

Looking in detail then at those slightly disappointing UK results

Rank 2018	Previous year	Institution
1	1	University of Oxford
2	4	University of Cambridge
8	8	Imperial College London
16	15	University College London
25	25	London School of Economics and Political Science
27	27	University of Edinburgh
36	36	King’s College London
54	55	University of Manchester
76	71	University of Bristol
80	88	University of Glasgow
91	82	University of Warwick
97	96	Durham University
104	109	University of Sheffield
121	113	Queen Mary University of London
126	121	University of Southampton
130	126	University of Exeter
137	129	University of York
139	133	University of Leeds
141	130	University of Birmingham
143	110	University of St Andrews
147	147	University of Nottingham
147	149	University of Sussex
150	137	Lancaster University
159	172	University of Leicester
162	182	Cardiff University

(Data is Copyright Times Higher Education 2018 – you can find their full results and analysis here.)

The international top 25 is as follows with Cambridge leapfrogging Caltech and Stanford into the second berth. The only other significant changes in the top 20 include the drop of eight places by Berkeley to 18th and the modest climbs of a few places by Johns Hopkins (from 17th to 13th) and Pennsylvania (from 13th to 10th equal).

Rank 2018	Previous year	Institution	Country
1	1	University of Oxford	United Kingdom
2	4	University of Cambridge	United Kingdom
3	2	California Institute of Technology	United States
3	3	Stanford University	United States
5	5	Massachusetts Institute of Technology	United States
6	6	Harvard University	United States
7	7	Princeton University	United States
8	8	Imperial College London	United Kingdom
9	10	University of Chicago	United States
10	9	ETH Zurich – Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich	Switzerland
10	13	University of Pennsylvania	United States
12	12	Yale University	United States
13	17	Johns Hopkins University	United States
14	16	Columbia University	United States
15	14	University of California, Los Angeles	United States
16	15	University College London	United Kingdom
17	18	Duke University	United States
18	10	University of California, Berkeley	United States
19	19	Cornell University	United States
20	20	Northwestern University	United States
21	21	University of Michigan	United States
22	24	National University of Singapore	Singapore
22	22	University of Toronto	Canada
24	23	Carnegie Mellon University	United States
25	25	London School of Economics and Political Science	United Kingdom
25	25	University of Washington	United States

(Data is Copyright Times Higher Education 2018 – again, you can find their full results and analysis here.)

The methodology has not changed since last year although the terminology has. The THEWUR website has all the details about the methodology but put simply the WUR claim to be the only global performance tables that judge research-intensive universities across all their core missions: teaching, research, knowledge transfer and international outlook.

We use 13 carefully calibrated performance indicators to provide the most comprehensive and balanced comparisons, trusted by students, academics, university leaders, industry and governments.
The performance indicators are grouped into five areas:

Teaching (the learning environment)

Research (volume, income and reputation)

Citations (research influence);

International outlook (staff, students and research)

Industry income (knowledge transfer)

These are weighted in the following proportions: