Reputation is a significant factor in the dominance of modern English-speaking universities and it is an indicator in the Times Higher Education (THE) world rankings, the QS world rankings, the US News Best Global Universities and the Round University Rankings. It also features in several national and specialist rankings.
THE has just published the latest edition of its global reputation rankings. As expected, the rankings show a group of six American and British “superbrands”: Harvard, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Stanford, Cambridge, Oxford, and the University of California at Berkeley. Then there is a sharp drop in the scores of a second tier of Universities including Princeton, Yale, University of California at Los Angeles, and the University of Tokyo, which is the best performing Asian institution.
The survey is based on responses to a survey conducted by Elsevier of academics published in indexed journals. There were 11,004 responses to the survey which was conducted between November 2001 and February of this year. The fields with the largest number of respondents were Physical Sciences, Clinical and Health Sciences, Life Sciences, and Business and Economics.
Although the top of the ranking is quite familiar a number of universities in Asia and Eastern Europe have now established themselves among the world’s elite. Tsinghua University has reached 13th place and there are another 12 Chinese universities in the top 200. Japan, South Korea and Russia are also well represented with twelve, six, and five institutions respectively.