The Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2021 have been published. The first place is held by the University of Oxford, UK, for the fifth consecutive year. Stanford University, USA, took second place (up from fourth last year). Harvard University, USA, came in third (up from seventh place last year).

As in last year’s ranking, the top 20 are dominated by North American and UK universities. The top institution based in continental Europe is the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), Zurich, in 14th place, and the top Asian university is Tsinghua University, China, which shares the 20th place with Duke University, USA.

Top 20 Universities

 

Rank	Institution	Country	Score
1	University of Oxford	UK	95.6
2	Stanford University	USA	94.9
3	Harvard University	USA	94.8
4	California Institute of Technology (Caltech)	USA	94.5
5	Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)	USA	94.4
6	University of Cambridge	UK	94.0
7	University of California, Berkeley	USA	92.2
8	Yale University	USA	91.6
9	Princeton University	USA	91.5
10	The University of Chicago	USA	90.3
11	Imperial College London	UK	89.4
12	Johns Hopkins University	USA	89.2
13	University of Pennsylvania	USA	88.9
14	Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich	Switzerland	87.9
15	University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)	USA	87.1
16	University College London	UK	86.9
17	Columbia University	USA	86.8
18	University of Toronto	Canada	86.0
19	Cornell University	USA	85.3
20	Duke University	USA	84.8
20	Tsinghua University	China	84.8

 

Methodology

The Times Higher Education ranking uses 13 performance indicators, grouped into five areas:

• Teaching: the learning environment (30 % of the overall ranking score)
• Research: volume, income, and reputation (30 %)
• Citations: research influence (30 %)
• International outlook: staff, students, and research (7.5 %)
• Industry income: knowledge transfer (2.5 %)

Institutions provide and sign off their institutional data for use in the rankings. Bibliometric data is supplied by Elsevier. The perceived prestige of institutions in teaching and research is evaluated using an annual survey. 

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Source

• Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2021

Also of Interest

• CWTS Leiden University Ranking 2020,
  ChemistryViews.org 2020.
  Scientific performance of over 1100 universities assessed based on bibliometric indicators