World’s Top Universities for 2014 Revealed

The annual World University Rankings for 2014-2015 was published earlier today by the Times Higher Education (THE) . The research classifies World’s Top Universities. The ranking focuses less on details such as professor ratings, entry requirements, alumni salaries and graduation rates and more on reputation and global scholarship. It is based on 13 different factors, among which are research, teaching and knowledge transfer.

Unlike other popular university lists, the World University Rankings features higher education institutes not only in the U.S and the U.K., but from across the world. Despite that, all universities on this year’s top 10 are located namely in these two countries. In addition, there are only two higher education schools on the 2014 ranking, which are not situated in the U.K. or the U.S. Those are the ETH Zurich – Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich and the Canada’s University of Toronto, which take the 13th and the 20th spots, respectively.

This year’s ranking is again headed by the California Institute of Technology. Often referred to as Caltech, this university tops the list for the fourth year in a row. What is interesting about it is that it is a private institution with barely 2,200 students.

Second this year is Harvard. Although it scored poorly in the category Industry Income, it continues to excel in Research and Citations. In addition, it is the best higher education school for life sciences. The University of Oxford comes third. One of the oldest university in the world received an impressive score for its international outlook. Oxford is followed by Stanford, which was also announced as the world’s leading university for Arts and Humanities, as well as for Social Sciences.

Cambridge is back among the first five after it jumped two spots. Other climbers on the 2014-2015 list are Imperial College London and Yale, which share the 9th position. Princeton and MIT, on the other hand, both registered a slight fall and ended up on the 6th and 7th spots, respectively.

• World university rankings for 2014-2015:
• California Institute of Technology (U.S.)
• Harvard University (U.S.)
• University of Oxford (U.S.)
• Stanford University (U.S.)
• University of Cambridge (U.K.)
• Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) (U.S.)
• Princeton University (U.S.)
• University of California, Berkeley (U.S.)
• Imperial College London (U.K.)
• Yale University (U.S.)

The region that performed the best on this year’s ranking is North America. It has a total of 31 universities in the top 50 and eight in the top 10. Europe also scored well although it had 20 less higher education schools among the first 50.

The highest rated Asian university is Japan’s The University of Tokyo, which occupies the 23rd place. Australia’s University of Melbourne takes the 33rd spot on the global ranking, which makes it the best higher education institute in Oceania.

Neither Africa, nor the Middle East managed to make their way to this year’s top 100. The same goes for South America.