The global face of education is changing. And it’s changing a lot, it seems. This year’s Times Higher Education (THE) Reputation Ranking has a seen a substantial shift among American, British and Asian schools.
Not surprisingly, US universities count for 43 of the top 100. Among US schools in the top 30 in 2015, 13 out of the 16 either rose up the ranking, like MIT and Stanford for instance, or held steady. Asian universities also made huge inroads this year, having jumped from 10 up to 18 of the top global schools, with Osaka University, Zhejiang University, the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), among others, joining the top 100.
Conversely, Asian schools gains have come at the expense of many traditionally strong universities, including in the UK, where even elite schools like Oxford and Cambridge have shifted down the rankings, with two UK universities, the University of Bristol and Durham University exiting the top 100 entirely.
The Reputation Rankings are formed by the views of an international panel of 10,000 academics, and while it’s hard to pinpoint precisely why as the reasons vary from school to school, reasons for the overall declining rankings among many UK universities include cuts to higher education funding, immigration rules affecting international students, and the government’s shifting emphasis on who it targets to admit.
Many leading Asian universities by contrast have climbed the list because of the ongoing, strong growth in higher education across the region, as well as greater global awareness of the improving quality of Asian institutions on the part of THE panelists themselves.
While Cambridge and Oxford continue to be some of the top schools in the world – meaning that even a slight fall in their standing would not diminish their reputation – the rankings become interesting relative to the position of other leading schools further down the list.
Studying overseas requires a substantial investment of time and money, and is an influential period that shapes the course of your life. Do your research with due diligence, and choose wisely.
The following are the top 10 in this year’s reputation ranking.
- Harvard University, US
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology, US
- Stanford University, US
- University of Cambridge, UK
- University of Oxford, UK
- University of California, Berkeley, US
- Princeton University, US
- Yale University, US
- Columbia University, US
- California Institute of Technology, US
