The annual Times Higher Education World University Rankings for 2016–2017 have been published. This year’s top institution is the University of Oxford, UK. It is the first UK university to take the lead in this ranking. The California Institute of Technology (Caltech), USA, which had the top rank for the last five years, takes second place, and Stanford University, CA, USA, came in third.

The top 20 are dominated by U.S. and UK universities, however, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich, Switzerland, has broken into the top ten this year and takes the ninth place. Asia’s highest ranked institution, the National University of Singapore (NUS), placed 24th overall.

Top 20 Universities

 

Rank	Institution	Country	Score
1	University of Oxford	UK	95.0
2	California Institute of Technology (Caltech)	USA	94.3
3	Stanford University	USA	93.8
4	University of Cambridge	UK	93.6
5	Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)	USA	93.4
6	Harvard University	USA	92.7
7	Princeton University	USA	90.2
8	Imperial College London	UK	90.0
9	Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich	Switzerland	89.3
10	University of California, Berkeley	USA	88.9
10	University of Chicago	USA	88.9
12	Yale University	USA	88.2
13	University of Pennsylvania	USA	87.1
14	University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)	USA	86.6
15	University College London	UK	86.5
16	Columbia University	USA	86.1
17	Johns Hopkins University	USA	85.9
18	Duke University	USA	84.7
19	Cornell University	USA	84.6
20	Northwestern University	USA	83.7

 

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. Data concerning citations is supplied by Elsevier.

 

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Source

• Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2016–2017
  in partnership with Elsevier

Also of Interest

• Academic Ranking of World Universities 2016,
  ChemistryViews.org 2016.
  Harvard University keeps first rank for the 14th consecutive year
• Asia University Rankings 2016,
  ChemistryViews.org 2016.
  Two highest ranked universities in Asia located in Singapore
• CWTS Leiden Ranking 2016,
  ChemistryViews.org 2016.
  Assessing the scientific performance of 842 universities based on bibliometric indicators