The best university in the world is no longer the Cambridge University in the UK. Nevertheless,
Cambridge is still home of the best university. This year, however, the world’s top university is not in the UK, but in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) overtook last year’s leader Cambridge University.
The Massachusetts Institute in Cambridge obtained the first place thanks to the excellent citation rates and its student-faculty ratio. Harvard University, which lead the chart from 2004 to 2009, now takes third place.
Researchers explain MIT’s progress with the rise of technology and science in the world. Many institutes, most of which are in Asia, follow the practices established by MIT.
MIT is not the only tech university that climbs the chart. A number of other similar institutes also gained better positions. Among them are Imperial College (6), Caltech (10) and ETH Zurich (13). In addition, rankings this year showed that institutes in Asia develop very rapidly.
Universities in North America and Europe
Out of the 700 leading universities, 130 are in the US. Moreover, six of them occupy a top-ten position.
Neighbouring Canada is entering the top 20 for the first time with the University of Toronto (19) and McGill (17). Statistics point that Toronto published the highest number of research works.
The UK is also doing pretty well. There are four UK universities in the top 6, including UCL (4), Oxford (5) and Imperial College (6).
Compared to last year’s ranking, Swiss universities are also gaining more points. Five of them moved to a higher position in the charts.
The top 2 places in continental Europe are occupied by ETH Zurich (13) and EPFL (19). This year the two universities reached their highest ranking position.
As it is with every competition, there are always some losers. Many French institutes continue to fall down the ranking. In fact, there is only one French university in the top 100 – ENS Paris. Compared to countries like the UK, Switzerland, the Netherlands and the US, France has tough time getting around.
In Germany, Technische Universität München surpassed Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg and took the 53rd place. Also, six German institutes improve their ranking in 2012. Nevertheless, the country has no universities in the top 50 this year and 14 of them score lower ranking then in 2011.
Universities in Asia-Pacific and Latin America
Australian universities are also losing their ground. Despite the fact, that Australia National University (24) gains a rise, Melbourne (36) falls down with 5 positions. In general, there seems to be a negative tendency among most of the Australian unis. However, together with the UK and the US, Australia has the highest number of institutes in the top 100.
In Asia, the best university for 2012 is the University of Hong Kong (23). After it come the National University of Singapore and Tokyo University. Institutes in Hong Kong perform better than other Chinese universities like Peking University and Tsinghua. Nevertheless, almost all universities in China improve their positions in the ranking. This may be due to the government’s support for research work. As a result, many Chinese universities received better scores for research citations.
However, that is not the case with another Asian country. India is the only BRICS country that doesn’t have a top 200 university. Even though a number of Indian institutes managed to score better this year, the country’s overall position remains very low.
The best university in Russia in Lomonosov Moscow State University and in South Africa – the University of Cape Town. Brazil’s Sao Paolo University scores highest in Latin America. Moreover, 12 of the institutes on the continent entered the top 400.
