If you are planning to enroll in a university this year, maybe you should take into consideration Times Higher Education’s latest annual ranking of the world’s most reputable higher education institutes. The list includes the names the most prestigious universities in 2014. Similar to previous years, the majority of them are either set in the U.K. or in the U.S. Asia also showed an impressive performance, particularity with universities in Japan and Hong Kong.
This year, the ranking is again topped by Harvard. The oldest U.S. academic institute received a maximum score on all paragraphs, including teaching and research reputation. The next two universities are also located in the U.S., MIT and Stanford take the 2nd and the 3rd spots, respectively.
In the top five are also two U.K. education institutes. Cambridge is ranked at the 4th position, followed by its biggest rival, Oxford, on the 5th place. The margin between them is really close – less than 5 points. Therefore, it is more than clear that the competition is very intense.
Even though Times Higher Education examined the universities in over 100 countries, the U.S. and the U.K. were the only countries in the top 10. Moreover, the situation is not much different in the top 20. Even though Japan’s University of Tokyo (11) and Kyoto University (19), Switzerland’s ETH Zurich (16) and Canada’s University of Toronto (20) are all among the first 20, British and American institutes’ domination is more than obvious.
- Read more: Top Universities by Reputation in 2013
In addition, some U.S. universities even improved their position on the list. For instance, Columbia University jumped from the 23rd to the 12th spot for just one year. Nevertheless, things were quite different with the country’s public universities. That is mainly due to the big spending cuts they witnessed in the past twelve months. As a result, the University of Texas dropped from the 27th to the 33rd position and the University of Massachusetts fell from the 42nd spot to the 63rd.
Unlike U.S. public academic institutes, universities in Asia are now enjoying a better financial support. That is probably why most of them have managed to improve their reputation over the last year. One of the most impressive rises is that of Seoul National University which climbed 15 positions.
As it was already mentioned, the ranking is based on different factors and disciplines offered in each of these universities. Therefore, THE has also ranked the top education institutes in subjects like Social Sciences, Arts & Humanities, Physical Sciences and others. The university with the best reputation in Arts & Humanities is Stanford. It also tops the list of Social Sciences. Unsurprisingly, MIT has the highest score when it comes to Engineering & Technology subjects. Harvard excels in Life Sciences, whereas California Institute of Technology leads in the Physical Sciences category. The sixth and final subject category is called Clinical, Pre-clinical & Health. The best reputation in this field has U.K.’s Oxford.
Here are the top 10 most reputable universities:
- Harvard
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- Stanford University
- University of Cambridge
- University of Oxford
- University of California, Berkeley
- Princeton University
- Yale University
- California Institute of Technology
- University of California, Los Angeles
Unfortunately, no academic institutes from the United Arab Emirates made it to the best universities ranking this year. In fact, the Middle East does not have representatives on the 2014 list of most reputable universities.
