14 September 2012

QS World Top University Rankings Bad News for China, Russia, Europe



The UK and North America did very well in the 2012 QS World University Rankings. Russia, China, and continental Europe did not do very well, however.

QS World University Rankings methodology

Rankings of world universities reflect on both the past and the future. You would expect nations with a wealthy history of achievement to build universities that rank high on the list. At the same time, you expect nations with highly ranked universities to produce a better class of graduates -- as a whole -- than those nations with universities that rank low on the list -- or fail to rank altogether.

Following are listed the top 20 in the 2012 rankings:




1861
 
M
 
VH
 
CO
 
5
Fees Range (USD$)DomesticInternational
Undergraduate38,000 - 40,00038,000 - 40,000
Postgraduate40,000 - 42,00040,000 - 42,000

Score details
Overall
100
 
AR
100.0
 
ER
100.0
 
CPF
99.3
 
FS
99.9
 
IF
86.4
 
IS
96.5
US universities continue to dominate the list, although four of the top six this year are British. American institutions make up 13 of the top 20 and 31 of the top 100 – the same as last year.

There is only one new entrant to the top 20 – the University of Toronto, at No 19.

Continental Europe performs poorly in the table. France has two entries – ENS Paris and the École Polytechnique, also in Paris – in the top 50, and two Swiss universities make the top 30, but there are no German universities in the top 50. _Guardian
Hong Kong, Singapore, and South Korea did the best out of the Asian universities, although none of them were able to break into the top 20.

Top 200 ranked universities 2012

Brazil and Mexico barely slid into the top 150 with one university apiece. Saudi Arabia managed to land one university at a rank of 197, representing the Arab and muslim worlds. Sub-Saharan Africa, to the surprise of only a few, failed to place.

These rankings represent both the past and the future. It is best not to place too much weight on them, or too little.


Update 15 Sept 12: The 2012 Shanghai Academic Ranking of World Universities utilises a somewhat different methodology, and thus provides a somewhat differently ranked list. (h/t Dan Kurt in comments) In this list, UK universities were ranked less highly, while Japan and continental Europe did somewhat better.


Further comment 15 Sept 12:

Reviewing the respective methodologies of the QS World University Rankings and the Shanghai Academic Ranking of World Universities, it appears that the Shanghai rankings are based more clearly upon objective criteria. The QS rankings are largely based upon academic reputation rankings derived from opinion survey results. The two rankings contain considerable overlap, but also display significant differences.

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2 Comments:

Blogger Dan Kurt said...

I would suggest you check out this ranking from China of the top 500 Universities.

http://www.shanghairanking.com/ARWU2012.html

or

www(dot)shanghairanking(dot)com/ARWU2012(dot)html

Dan Kurt

Friday, 14 September, 2012  
Blogger J said...

Good reputation is nice but there must some other point in operating an university.

Saturday, 15 September, 2012  

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