World university rankings and why Britain should be proud

By John O’Leary, Editor of The Times Good University Guide

Global university rankings published today show some of the leading UK universities slipping further behind their American counterparts. So are the British institutions on the slide and should those who can afford it be heading off across the Atlantic?

The first important point is that the UK remains head and shoulders above every country except the US in the Times Higher Education/QS rankings. There may be only 17 universities in the top 100, compared with 19 last year, but that is ten more than any other nation managed. There are still four in the top ten  - Cambridge, Oxford, Imperial College London and University College London. That is a lot more than most observers expected when the rankings were first published, four years ago.

Given the comparative riches enjoyed by the top American universities, there was probably only one way for the Brits to go this year. Oxford and Cambridge, which tied for second place with Yale last year, were never going to overhaul Harvard, which has more money than most countries and uses it to attract the best academics and provide them with the best facilities. Some illustrious names in US higher education – such as Princeton and Stanford – are still well behind them in the ranking.

More British students are applying to American universities but, for all the controversy over top-up fees, it remains a much more expensive option unless you are on an extremely generous scholarship. Fees of $30,000 are not uncommon in the Ivy League and degrees take four years, rather than three.

The rankings are a useful guide for those who are thinking of going abroad to study, but they are quite different to the domestic league tables published by The Times, which are constructed with undergraduates in mind. Comparisons of entry scores, student satisfaction, completion rates and job prospects, which form a big part of The Times tables, are simply not available internationally.

Instead, the world rankings rely heavily on academics’ views of the best university in their discipline – a valid measure but, inevitably, one that relates to research much more than to teaching. That is why the UK universities are in a slightly different order to that in The Times Good University Guide. Most obviously, Cambridge, rather than Oxford, is the top British institution, but there are differences throughout the rankings.

Having been involved in setting up both sets of tables, I would defend the world rankings as a broad measure of international standing. But measures that cross national boundaries are not sufficiently precise to worry about the marginal decline shown in today’s publication. British higher education would need a lot more money – which it seems unlikely to get in the current circumstances – to overhaul the Americans. Prospective students and their parents should be reassured, not depressed, by these results.

Read more on School Gate by John O'Leary

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How to get into university to read law - the easier way

Comments

[whimsey]

How do British unis compare to those in Europe, especially with the countries whose GDPs are most comparable with ours (France, Germany and Italy??). It's probably completely only my ignorance, but when I think of universities in those countries I can only come up with the Sorbonne, Heidleberg and Bologna. Are there other world-class ones there (assuming those three are, of course?).

[Jacinta]

Whimsey - there are many European universities which are (historically) considered 'elite' within their own countries, but on the world stage have neither the funding nor facilities to compete with even their British counterparts let alone internationally - a prestigious reputation only counts for so much. Take the LSE for example, which ranks rather poorly in the current global league table despite its prestige in the UK.

[Stuart A. Rice]

One should read these rankings as an enormously positive citation of the quality of UK higher education. The population of the US is five times greater than that of the UK, and if all else were equal there would be five times as many US universities as UK universities in any subset of the list. The UK does much better than that at the top end of the list.

[George]

Unbelievable... is it possible to know which paramteres you have used? or simply your universities MUST be the best...

[Monika Sankhla]

Where can i found the entire list of top 200 given by Times today....

[Alson]

Go to Asia, where half the world's population lives, and tell them that UCL or Imperial are better than Stanford, MIT, Columbia, etc. They will laugh at you, the same way that non-British laugh at this "ranking".

[george]

how can in times guide manchester university is in the 29th position and the world rankings the same?

Um...Aslon there were plenty of Asian students at UCL when I went there and Imperial take half international and half from the UK. These unis have the reputation or we wouldn't get so many students pay a lot for the privilege (international students can be charged as much as the uni wants)

[Adrian]

A hint of Times/UK bias? Nobel prizes, Fields Medals etc are what counts!

[j]

Whimsey, the best source of data on your question about the strcuture of european universities is the time higher education supplement which has a report on that very theme this week. I dont know if you can read it online without subscription, have a go.

[Delilah]

British unis are not set up for foreign undergraduate students; if you have not done A-levels (and who would want to if you had alternatives) you need at least a four-year, rather than a three-year degree course, and don't expect to specialise until the last couple of years of study - British unis are not good at accommodating this, they expect very early specialisation. For this reason, most international students at British unis are postgrads - so the lack of research funding is a BIG issue, because it affects both teaching and prospects.

I don't know what will happen to English unis if they don't change their structure - remain a ghetto for English A-level graduates, I suppose. Scottish unis have been rather better at marketing themselves internationally because of the Highers system; perhaps the gradual shift to the IB in good public schools will encourage a similar shift in English universities. But undergrad teaching aside, continuing private and public underinvestment will inevitably reduce even the best British unis to backwaters which excel only in ethnic specialities like Elizabethan poetry and Norman architecture.

[Edmund Burke]

It's a matter of logic: if you introduce a comprehensive education system at secondary level, and allow it to work its way upwards into tertiary level, as a result of which you start admitting students into academe who are devoid of academic skills, you cannot subsequently claim to have a tertiary level education system which is brimming with academic achievement. Doh!

[Mark]

The 18 best universities of the world are in English speaking countries? Really? Then how come the export champtions are Germany and Japan instead of US/UK? Is there really anybody who seriously believes that UK engineering is better than German one or American better than Japanese? So what are those universities so good at? Foreign languages?

And did the people creating this survey also attend one of those fine universities where they were taught that Zurich is in Sweden? (Click on .pdf if you do not believe it).

http://www.unisg.ch/org/hsg/rankings.nsf/wwwPubInhalteEng/Times+Higher+Education+Supplement+Ranking?opendocument

[John]

"The 18 best universities of the world are in English speaking countries? Really? Then how come the export champtions are Germany and Japan instead of US/UK? Is there really anybody who seriously believes that UK engineering is better than German one or American better than Japanese? So what are those universities so good at? Foreign languages?"

Mark, there is more to education then engineering and foreign languages. Remember the business language of the world is english, UK is so strong when it comes business, economics and law, hence why the Brits do so well internationally.

[Ji Han Hyo]

Just because some universities in US&UK are highly ranked does not mean that the students who go there are of the highest caliber. I know a lot of students who do really well on high school international math and science competitions who go to colleges in their respective countries, which often lag behind their counterparts in US&UK.

[John Francis]

Who cares about this snobbish, self-promoting nonsense? The current obsession for elitism in education has no relevance at all for the vast majority of students who just need a reasonable level of education or a degree to kick off their career. I've known plenty of idiotic Oxford and Cambridge grads and some brilliant graduates of universities nobody's ever heard of. Achievement is a product of what you do, not the names you can write on your CV. We should closely consider the questions of who is driving this agenda and who is benefitting from it.

[Anne]

To Delilah, you clearly haven't had to apply to university in the last 5-10 years, now all universities accept the I.B, amongst other qualifications which are seen in many highschools in other countries. International students do not have to take a three year course, they do the exact same course a British students.
If we all needed A-levels to enter university there would be no such thing as the mature student either, there is a man on my course (Biological sciences)who is 76, has no qualifications at all apart from a short course in plant biology he took with the Open University.

[fran d]

ivy league unis are cheaper than the uk for the vast majority of UK students- the means tested bursaries from yale and stanford mean anybpdy earning less than 60k gets a huge bursary- bringing fees in line with the UK. I'm at yale and am paying at least a quarter of what I would be in the UK after receiving no bursary form the government.

Other american unis are out of reach for normal students, but the ivy league are CHEAP!!!

[Wanderer]

I went to Columbia for a post-grad and encountered some Oxford grads doing the same. While sometimes a little obsessive about their topic matter, the American students seemed far more erudite and intellectually-rounded than their UK counterparts. Based on my experience, the Times table is too UK-centric.

[Adam]

Trinity College, Cambridge has had more Nobel prize winners wor there than there have been winners from France, Germany, Italy and Japan combined.