The decline of the Western powerhouse?
The last league table of the season is out with the publication of the latest THE World University Ranking. The full gory details can be found here but it is interesting to note the narrative of Western decline:
However, there are signs of decline for the traditional Western powerhouse lower down in the table. The US now has 63 universities in the top 200, down from 74 last year, and 77 the year before. Six of these make the top 10, compared with seven last year.
Phil Baty, THE rankings editor, said that the US’ movement is to some degree owing to significant improvements to the rankings’ data sources this year, with “improved coverage of research not published in English and a better geographical spread of responses to our academic reputation survey”.
However, he added that it also demonstrates that the US’ leading status as the world’s top magnet for academic and student talent “cannot be taken for granted”, citing figures that show that 47 states in the US have implemented higher education funding cuts since the global recession in 2008.
However, the top of the table is still very much dominated by US universities:
1 Caltech
2 Oxford
3 Stanford
4 Cambridge
5 MIT
6 Harvard
7 Princeton
9 Imperial
9 ETH Zurich
10 Chicago
11 Johns Hopkins
12 Yale
13 Berkeley
14 UCL
15 Colombia
16 UCLA
17 Pennsylvania
18 Cornell
19 Toronto
20 Duke
21 Michigan
22 Carnegie Mellon
23 LSE
24 Edinburgh
25 Northwestern
UK universities’ performance is not too shabby either with 33 in the Top 200 (up from 29 last year):
2 Oxford
4 Cambridge
8 Imperial College
14 UCL
23 LSE
24 Edinburgh
27 King’s College
56= Manchester
69 Bristol
70 Durham
76= Glasgow
80 Warwick
86 St Andrews
93 Exeter
97 Sheffield
98 Queen Mary
110= Southampton
119 Birmingham
129 Royal Holloway
130 Lancaster
131= York
133= Leeds
140 Sussex
143 Nottingham
149= UEA
157 Liverpool
164= Reading
167= Leicester
172= Aberdeen
182= Cardiff
196= Newcastle
196= St George’s
200 Queen’s Belfast
Full methodology can be found here.
And it’s great to see Ulm University in there at 192 (those with good memories will recall its impressive showing in another league table).
All data is from Times Higher Education WUR.
