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Posted March 17, 2011

Worldwide University Rankings Released

Last week Times Higher Education published a table of the world’s top universities according to their reputation…

But what does this actually mean?

According to this new university league table almost half of the world’s top universities are in the US - America boasts 45 out of the 100 top institutions, with seven of its universities ranking among the top 10! Harvard University has the number one spot, followed by MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), and then the third place went to Cambridge University in the UK. In fact the UK had one other university in the top ten - Oxford University (obviously), and 12 institutions in total in the global top 100.

The Times Higher Education World Reputation Rankings university league table is a subsidiary of the annual Times Higher Education World University Rankings, and is based on the results of a worldwide survey of academics. These rankings are a measure of an institution’s reputation for excellence, in both teaching and research, as perceived by experienced university academics from around the world.

It could be said that as this “Universities by Reputation” university league table concentrates on the reputations of the institutions for teaching and research, it may well give a bias towards institutions with strengths in science rather than those whose strengths lie in the humanities.

This university reputation league table is based on a survey of 13,388 academics from 131 different countries. The survey was offered in eight different languages - English, Japanese, Simplified Chinese, Spanish, French, German,, Brazilian Portuguese and European Portuguese, but despite this, there does seem to be a bias towards institutions in the English speaking countries.

If you compare the “Reputation Rankings 2011” to the Times Higher Education World University Rankings for 2010, in some instances there is a massive difference in the position of universities. For example, the reputation of LSE puts it 50 positions higher than its World Ranking in 2010, and University of Massachusetts is almost 40 places higher. Meanwhile Northwestern University has plummeted 15 placed down from 25 to 40. It seems unlikely that any institution can change so drastically in just a year.

But with university fees rocketing, as we‘ve talked about in our blog  previously , the reputation of an institution is of paramount importance, however their position in a university league table is determined.

Top UK universities

The UK universities that received a placing in this Times Higher Education University by Reputation League Table are:

University of Cambridge (3) University of Oxford (6) Imperial College London (11) University College London (19) London School of Economics and Political Science (37) University of Edinburgh (45) King’s College London (63) University of Manchester (67) University of Bristol (89) University of Leeds (90) London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (94) University of Sheffield (98)

Look at the complete list of Top Universities by Reputation.

Check out our information on Postgraduate Program Rankings featuring information on official rankings and unofficial rankings.
 

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