Dive Brief:
- While U.S. and European universities still dominate the Times Higher Education list of top universities in the world, Chinese schools are improving their ranks and Japanese institutions are slipping behind.
- Harvard remains the top university for the 13th year in a row and the rest of the top 10 have not changed since the 2014 rankings.
- Among the top 100 schools, the United States is home to 51 and Europe has much of the rest.
Dive Insight:
Times Higher Education ranks universities after analyzing 13 performance indicators, judging schools based on their teaching, research, knowledge transfer, and international outlook. The story of the last couple of years has been the ascent of Asian universities from Japan and China, but this year Japan lost ground. Times Higher Education reports that it has one fewer institution in the top 200 and one more in the bottom rung of the top 500 ladder.
While these rankings can be heartily criticized when it comes to methodology and impact, no one can write them off as students continue to report that rankings factor heavily in their decision-making.