The university in Wageningen is the highest ranked university in the Netherlands for the fourth year in a row. However, the university drops in the world rankings. Other Dutch universities are making progress. As a result, Wageningen is no longer leading solo in the Netherlands, but has turned the university into the leader of a Dutch platoon in the annual World University Rankings of the British Times Higher Education magazine.
Wageningen had risen last year from 62nd to 53rd place, twelve places higher than the next Dutch university. This year, Wageningen drops to 59. Immediately behind it is the University of Amsterdam, which climbs from 65 to 60. The top 100 universities in the world also include Utrecht (from 69 to 66), Delft (from 75 to 70), Groningen (from 80 to 75), Leiden (from 71 to 77) and Erasmus University Rotterdam (from 72 to 80). The Free University (VU) in Amsterdam has dropped from 115 to 121, Radboud University in Nijmegen remains in 139th and Maastricht drops from 127 to 145. Eindhoven, Tilburg and Twente are not in the top 200.
The British University of Oxford is the best-rated university in the world for the seventh year in a row. Harvard in the United States is second, Cambridge and Stanford are joint third. Also in the top 10 in the world are MIT, Caltech, Princeton, Berkeley and Yale in the US and Imperial College in Great Britain. There are some shifts here and there, but broadly speaking the top looks the same as previous years.
Slightly lower on the list, however, major changes can be seen. Asia now has more universities on the list than Europe, 669 compared to 639. In the top 20 are three universities from Asia and one from the European mainland. Times Higher Education speaks of “a major shift in the balance of power in the knowledge economy”.
Europe has, according to the magazine, “an extraordinarily rich and diverse heritage of excellence, but it cannot afford to sit back. You have to run really fast to stand still in the world rankings. If you lose ground, there is a risk of a vicious circle, eventually losing access to talent and collaborations.”
The Times Higher Education ranking is one of the most important international rankings for assessing university performance. For the latest list, 1799 different universities in 104 countries and territories have been assessed on various factors. For example, education, research, knowledge transfer and international positioning are examined.