World’s best universities revealed

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has been ranked the world’s best university for the 5th year running.

The 2016 Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) World University Rankings, released yesterday, show that US institutions hold all top-three places for the first time since 2004/5. Stanford and Harvard complete the top three. The highest ranked non-US university was Cambridge (4th), while California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in the US was fifth,

The top 20 is dominated by US universities, with 11 based in the States. Five are located in the UK, two in Switzerland and two in Singapore.

In total, the rankings include 916 universities from 81 countries. Thirty-three countries feature in the Top 200. The US leads the way, with 48 institutions, ahead of the UK (30), Netherlands (12), Germany (11), Canada, Australia (9), Japan (8), China (7), France, Sweden and Hong Kong (5).

The rankings indicate that investment in higher education – either public or private – is a key differentiating factor between this year’s risers (South Korea, Russia, the United States, and China) and fallers (Western and Southern Europe, South Africa, and Latin America).

The highest ranked Canadian institution in McGill University in 30th position, followed by Toronto in 32nd. The University of Melbourne leads the way in terms of Australian universities (40th), with the University of Sydney six places lower. New Zealand also makes the top 100, with the University of Auckland ranked 82nd.

The QS World University Rankings are based on four key pillars: research, teaching, employability and internationalisation.

World’s best universities (top 10)

  1.  Massachusetts Institute of Technology, United States
  2. Stanford University, US
  3. Harvard University, US
  4. University of Cambridge, United Kingdom
  5. California Institute of Technology, US
  6. University of Oxford, UK
  7. University College London, UK
  8. ETH Zurich – Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Switzerland
  9. Imperial College London, UK
  10. University of Chicago, US

Article published 6th September 2016