Times Higher Education World University Rankings

Times Higher Education World University Rankings

Editor	Phil Baty
Categories	Higher education
Frequency	Annual
Publisher	Times Higher Education
First issue	2010
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English
Website	www.timeshighereducation.com/world-university-rankings/

Times Higher Education World University Rankings is an annual publication of university rankings by Times Higher Education (THE) magazine. The publisher had collaborated with Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) to announce the joint THE–QS World University Rankings form 2004 to 2009 before it turned to Thomson Reuters for a new ranking system. The publication now comprises the world's overall, subject and reputation rankings, alongside two regional league tables, Asia and BRICS & Emerging Economies with consistent methodology. It is considered as one of the most widely observed university measures together with Academic Ranking of World Universities and QS World University Rankings.^[1][2][3] It is praised for having a new improved methodology but undermining non-English-instructing institutions and being commercialized are the major criticism.^[4][5][6]

History

The creation of the original Times Higher Education-QS World University Rankings was credited in Ben Wildavsky's book, The Great Brain Race: How Global Universities are Reshaping the World,^[7] to then-editor of Times Higher Education, John O'Leary. Times Higher Education chose to partner with educational and careers advice company QS to supply the data.

After the 2009 rankings, Times Higher Education took the decision to break from QS and signed an agreement with Thomson Reuters to provide the data for its annual World University Rankings from 2010 onwards. The publication developed a new rankings methodology in consultation with its readers, its editorial board and Thomson Reuters. Thomson Reuters will collect and analyse the data used to produce the rankings on behalf of Times Higher Education. The first ranking was published in September 2010.^[8]

Commenting on Times Higher Education's decision to split from QS, former editor Ann Mroz said: "universities deserve a rigorous, robust and transparent set of rankings – a serious tool for the sector, not just an annual curiosity." She went on to explain the reason behind the decision to continue to produce rankings without QS' involvement, saying that: "The responsibility weighs heavy on our shoulders...we feel we have a duty to improve how we compile them."^[9]

Phil Baty, editor of the new Times Higher Education World University Rankings, admitted in Inside Higher Ed: "The rankings of the world's top universities that my magazine has been publishing for the past six years, and which have attracted enormous global attention, are not good enough. In fact, the surveys of reputation, which made up 40 percent of scores and which Times Higher Education until recently defended, had serious weaknesses. And it's clear that our research measures favored the sciences over the humanities."^[10]

He went on to describe previous attempts at peer review as "embarrassing" in The Australian: "The sample was simply too small, and the weighting too high, to be taken seriously."^[11] THE published its first rankings using its new methodology on 16 September 2010, a month earlier than previous years.^[12]

The Times Higher Education World University Rankings, along with the QS World University Rankings and the Academic Ranking of World Universities are described to be the three most influential international university rankings.^[1][13] The Globe and Mail in 2010 described the Times Higher Education World University Rankings to be "arguably the most influential."^[14]

In 2014 Times Higher Education announced a series of important changes to its flagship THE World University Rankings and its suite of global university performance analyses, following a strategic review by THE parent company TES Global.^[15]

Methodology

Criteria and weighting

The inaugural 2010-2011 methodology is 13 separate indicators grouped under five categories: Teaching (30 percent of final score), research (30 percent), citations (research impact) (worth 32.5 percent), international mix (5 percent), industry income (2.5 percent). The number of indicators is up from the Times-QS rankings published between 2004 and 2009, which used six indicators.^[16]

A draft of the methodology was released on 3 June 2010. The draft stated that 13 indicators would first be used and that this could rise to 16 in future rankings, and laid out the categories of indicators as "research indicators" (55 percent), "institutional indicators" (25 percent), "economic activity/innovation" (10 percent), and "international diversity" (10 percent).^[17] The names of the categories and the weighting of each was modified in the final methodology, released on 16 September 2010.^[16] The final methodology also included the weighting signed to each of the 13 indicators, shown below:^[16]

Overall indicator	Individual indicator	Percentage weighting
Industry Income – innovation	Research income from industry (per academic staff)	2.5%
International diversity	Ratio of international to domestic staff Ratio of international to domestic students	3% 2%
Teaching – the learning environment	Reputational survey (teaching) PhDs awards per academic Undergrad. admitted per academic Income per academic PhDs/undergraduate degrees awarded	15% 6% 4.5% 2.25% 2.25%
Research – volume, income and reputation	Reputational survey (research) Research income (scaled) Papers per research and academic staff Public research income/ total research income	19.5% 5.25% 4.5% 0.75%
Citations – research influence	Citation impact (normalised average citation per paper)	32.5%

The Times Higher Education billed the methodology as "robust, transparent and sophisticated," stating that the final methodology was selected after considering 10 months of "detailed consultation with leading experts in global higher education," 250 pages of feedback from "50 senior figures across every continent" and 300 postings on its website.^[16] The overall ranking score was calculated by making Z-scores all datasets to standardize different data types on a common scale to better make comparisons among data.^[16]

The reputational component of the rankings (34.5 percent of the overall score – 15 percent for teaching and 19.5 percent for research) came from an Academic Reputation Survey conducted by Thomson Reuters in spring 2010. The survey gathered 13,388 responses among scholars "statistically representative of global higher education's geographical and subject mix."^[16] The magazine's category for "industry income – innovation" came from a sole indicator, institution's research income from industry scaled against the number of academic staff." The magazine stated that it used this data as "proxy for high-quality knowledge transfer" and planned to add more indicators for the category in future years.^[16]

Data for citation impact (measured as a normalized average citation per paper), comprising 32.5 percent of the overall score, came from 12,000 academic journals indexed by Thomson Reuters' large Web of Science database over the five years from 2004 to 2008. The Times stated that articles published in 2009–2010 have not yet completely accumulated in the database.^[16] The normalization of the data differed from the previous rankings system and is intended to "reflect variations in citation volume between different subject areas," so that institutions with high levels of research activity in the life sciences and other areas with high citation counts will not have an unfair advantage over institutions with high levels of research activity in the social sciences, which tend to use fewer citations on average.^[16]

The magazine announced on 5 September 2011 that its 2011–2012 World University Rankings would be published on 6 October 2011.^[18] At the same time, the magazine revealed changes to the ranking formula that will be introduced with the new rankings. The methodology will continue to use 13 indicators across five broad categories and will keep its "fundamental foundations," but with some changes. Teaching and research will each remain 30 percent of the overall score, and industry income will remain at 2.5 percent. However, a new "international outlook – staff, students and research" will be introduced and will make up 7.5 percent of the final score. This category will include the proportion of international staff and students at each institution (included in the 2011–2012 ranking under the category of "international diversity"), but will also add the proportion of research papers published by each institution that are co-authored with at least one international partner. One 2011–2012 indicator, the institution's public research income, will be dropped.^[18]

On 13 September 2011, the Times Higher Education announced that its 2011–2012 list will only rank the top 200 institutions. Phil Baty wrote that this was in the "interests of fairness," because "the lower down the tables you go, the more the data bunch up and the less meaningful the differentials between institutions become." However, Baty wrote that the rankings would include 200 institutions that fall immediately outside the official top 200 according to its data and methodology, but this "best of the rest" list from 201 to 400 would be unranked and listed alphabetically. Baty wrote that the magazine intentionally only ranks around 1 percent of the world's universities in a recognition that "not every university should aspire to be one of the global research elite."^[19]

The methodology of the rankings has been refined during the 2011-12 rankings process, the details of the new methodology can be found here.^[20] Phil Baty, the rankings editor, has said that the THE World University Rankings are the only global university rankings to examine a university's teaching environment, as others focus purely on research.^[21] Baty has also written that the THE World University Rankings are the only rankings to put arts and humanities and social sciences research on an equal footing to the sciences.^[22]

In November 2014 the magazine announced further reforms to the methodology after a review by parent company TES Global. The major change being all institutional data collection would be bought in house severing the connection with Thomson Reuters. In addition research publication data would now be sourced from Elsevier's Scopus database.^[23]

Reception

The reception to the methodology was varied.

Ross Williams of the Melbourne Institute, commenting on the 2010–2011 draft, stated that the proposed methodology would favour more focused "science-based institutions with relatively few undergraduates" at the expense of institutions with more comprehensive programmes and undergraduates, but also stated that the indicators were "academically robust" overall and that the use of scaled measures would reward productivity rather than overall influence.^[4] Steve Smith, president of Universities UK, praised the new methodology as being "less heavily weighted towards subjective assessments of reputation and uses more robust citation measures," which "bolsters confidence in the evaluation method."^[5] David Willetts, British Minister of State for Universities and Science praised the rankings, noting that "reputation counts for less this time, and the weight accorded to quality in teaching and learning is greater."^[6]

Criticism

Times Higher Education gives much importance to citations on their ranking. This has been criticised for undermining universities that do not use English as their primary language.^[24] Citations and publications in a language different from English are harder to come across.^[25] Thus, such a methodology is condemned for being inappropriate and not comprehensive enough.^[26] A second important disadvantage for universities of non Anglo-Saxon tradition is that within the disciplines of social sciences and humanities the main tool for publications are books which are not or only rarely covered by citations records.^[27]

Times Higher Education has also been criticised for its strong bias towards institutions that taught 'hard science' and had high quality output of research in these fields, often to the disadvantage of institutions more focused on other subjects like the social sciences and humanities. For instance in the former THE-QS World University Rankings, LSE was ranked 11th in the world in 2004 and 2005, but dropped to 66th and 67th in the 2008 and 2009 edition.^[28] In January 2010, THE concluded that the method employed by Quacquarelli Symonds, who conducted the survey on their behalf, was flawed in such a way that bias was introduced against certain institutions, including LSE.^[29] A representative of Thomson Reuters, THE's new partner, commented on the controversy: "LSE stood at only 67th in the last Times Higher Education-QS World University Rankings – some mistake surely? Yes, and quite a big one."^[29] Nonetheless, after the change of data provider to Thomson Reuters the following year, LSE fell even further to 86th place, with the ranking described by a representative of Thomson Reuters as 'a fair reflection of their status as a world class university'.^[30] LSE despite being ranked continuously near the top in its national rankings, has been placed below other British universities in the Times Higher Education World Rankings in recent years, other institutions such as Sciences Po have suffered due to the inherent methodology bias still used.

Global rankings

Overall

Times Higher Education World University Rankings—Top 50^{[Note 1]}

Institution	2010-11[31]	2011-12[32]	2012-13[33]	2013-14[34]	2014-15[35]	2015-16[36]
California Institute of Technology	2	1	1	1	1	1
University of Oxford	6	4	2	2	3	2
Stanford University	4	2	3	4	4	3
University of Cambridge	6	6	7	7	5	4
Massachusetts Institute of Technology	3	7	5	5	6	5
Harvard University	1	2	4	2	2	6
Princeton University	5	5	6	6	7	7
Imperial College London	9	8	8	10	9	8
Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zürich	15	15	12	14	13	9
University of Chicago	12	9	10	9	11	10
The Johns Hopkins University	13	14	16	15	15	11
Yale University	10	11	11	11	9	12
University of California, Berkeley	8	10	9	8	8	13
University College London	22	17	17	21	22	14
Columbia University	18	12	14	13	14	15
University of California, Los Angeles	11	13	13	12	12	16
University of Pennsylvania	19	16	15	16	16	17
Cornell University	14	20	18	19	19	18
University of Toronto	17	19	21	20	20	19
Duke University	24	22	23	17	18	20
University of Michigan	15	18	20	18	17	21
Carnegie Mellon University	20	21	22	24	24	22
London School of Economics and Political Science	86	47	39	32	34	23
University of Edinburgh	40	36	32	39	36	24
Northwestern University	25	26	19	22	21	25
National University of Singapore	34	40	29	26	25	26
King's College London	77	56	57	38	40	27
Karolinska Institute	43	32	42	36	44	28
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München	--	27	31	30	29	29
New York University	60	34	31	30	38	30
École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne	48	46	40	37	34	31
University of Washington	23	25	24	25	26	32
The University of Melbourne	36	37	28	34	33	33
University of British Columbia	30	22	30	31	32	34
KU Leuven	118	67	58	61	55	35
University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign	33	31	33	29	29	36
Heidelberg University	83	73	78	68	70	37
McGill University	35	28	34	35	39	38
University of California, Santa Barbara	29	35	35	33	37	39
University of California, San Diego	32	33	38	40	41	39
Georgia Institute of Technology	27	24	25	28	27	41
Peking University	37	49	46	45	48	42
The University of Tokyo	26	30	27	23	23	43
University of California, Davis	54	38	44	52	55	44
The University of Hong Kong	21	34	35	43	43	44
University of Texas at Austin	--	29	25	27	28	46
Tsinghua University	58	71	52	50	49	47
Wageningen University and Research Center	144	75	70	77	73	47
Humboldt University of Berlin	178	109	99	94	80	49
University of Wisconsin-Madison	61	45	48	55	29	50

Young Universities

In addition, THE also provides 150 Under 50 Universities with different weightings of indicators to accredit the growth of institutions that are under 50 years old.^[37] In particular, the ranking attaches less weight to reputation indicators.

Subject

Various academic disciplines are sorted into six categories in THE's subject rankings: "Arts & Humanities"; "Clinical, Pre-clinical & Health"; "Engineering & Technology"; "Life Sciences"; "Physical Sciences"; and "Social Sciences".^[38]

Reputation

Regions with universities included in the reputation league tables.

THE's World Reputation Rankings serve as a subsidiary of the overall league tables and rank universities independently in accordance with their scores in prestige.^[39]

Scott Jaschik of Inside Higher Ed said of the new rankings: "...Most outfits that do rankings get criticised for the relative weight given to reputation as opposed to objective measures. While Times Higher Education does overall rankings that combine various factors, it is today releasing rankings that can't be criticised for being unclear about the impact of reputation – as they are strictly of reputation."^[40]

Times Higher Education World Reputation Rankings—Top 50^{[Note 1]}

Institution	2011[41]	2012[42]	2013[43]	2014[44]	2015[45]
Harvard University	1	1	1	1	1
University of Cambridge	3	3	3	4	2
University of Oxford	6	6	4	5	3
Massachusetts Institute of Technology	2	2	2	2	4
Stanford University	5	4	6	3	5
University of California, Berkeley	4	5	5	6	6
Princeton University	7	7	7	7	7
Yale University	9	10	10	8	8
California Institute of Technology	10	11	11	9	9
Columbia University	23	15	13	12	10
University of Chicago	15	14	14	14	11
The University of Tokyo	8	8	9	11	12
University of California, Los Angeles	12	9	8	10	13
Imperial College, London	11	13	14	13	14
Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zürich	24	22	20	16	15
University of Toronto	17	16	16	20	16
University College London	19	21	20	25	17
The Johns Hopkins University	14	18	19	18	18
University of Michigan	13	12	12	15	19
Cornell University	16	16	17	17	20
New York University	51-60	34	29	27	20
London School of Economics and Political Science	37	29	25	24	22
University of Pennsylvania	22	19	18	22	23
National University of Singapore	27	23	22	21	24
Lomonosov Moscow State University	33	--	50	51-60	25
Tsinghua University	35	30	35	36	26
Kyoto University	18	20	23	19	27
Carnegie Mellon University	28	37	26	29	28
University of Edinburgh	45	49	46	46	29
University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign	21	23	24	23	30
King's College London	61-70	61-70	61-70	43	31
Peking University	43	38	45	41	32
University of Washington	26	28	27	31	33
Duke University	36	33	31	30	34
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München	48	42	44	46	35
McGill University	29	25	31	33	35
University of British Columbia	31	25	31	33	37
Heidelberg University	81-90	71-80	71-80	61-70	38
University of California, San Francisco	34	31	40	32	38
University of Wisconsin-Madison	--	27	30	28	38
Humboldt University of Berlin	71-80	61-70	71-80	71-80	41
University of California, San Diego	30	36	34	40	41
The University of Melbourne	45	43	39	43	41
University of California, Davis	38	44	48	51-60	44
Karolinska Institute	51-60	51-60	61-70	51-60	45
University of Texas at Austin	31	32	27	33	46
Northwestern University	40	35	37	37	47
École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne	71-80	61-70	51-60	49	48
Georgia Institute of Technology	39	41	38	38	49
University of Manchester	61-70	51-60	47	51-60	50

Regional rankings

Asia

Times Higher Education Asia University Rankings — Top 10^{[Note 1]}

Institution	2012-13[46]	2013-14[47]	2014-15[48]
The University of Tokyo	1	1	1
National University of Singapore	2	2	2
The University of Hong Kong	3	3	3
Peking University	4	5	4
Tsinghua University	6	6	5
Seoul National University	8	4	6
The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology	9	9	7
Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology	10	8	8
Kyoto University	7	7	9
Nanyang Technological University	11	11	10

BRICS and emerging economies

THE's BRICS & Emerging Economies Rankings only includes universities in countries classified as "emerging economies" by FTSE, including the "BRICS" nations of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. Hong Kong institutions are not comprised in this ranking.

Times Higher Education BRICS & Emerging Economies Rankings — Top 10^{[Note 1]}

Institution	2014[49]	2015[50]
Peking University	1	1
Tsinghua University	2	2
Middle East Technical University	9	3
University of Cape Town	3	4
Lomonosov Moscow State University	10	5
National Taiwan University	4	6
Boğaziçi University	5	7
Istanbul Technical University	7	8
Fudan University	8	9
University of São Paulo	11	10

Notes

1. Order shown in accordance with the latest result.

References

1. Ariel Zirulnick. "New world university ranking puts Harvard back on top". The Christian Science Monitor. Those two, as well as Shanghai Jiao Tong University, produce the most influential international university rankings out there
2. Indira Samarasekera & Carl Amrhein. "Top schools don't always get top marks". The Edmonton Journal. Archived from the original on 3 October 2010. There are currently three major international rankings that receive widespread commentary: The Academic World Ranking of Universities, the QS World University Rankings and the Times Higher Education Rankings.
3. Philip G. Altbach (11 November 2010). "The State of the Rankings". Inside Higher Ed. Retrieved 27 January 2015. The major international rankings have appeared in recent months — the Academic Ranking of World Universities, the QS World University Rankings, and the Times Higher Education World University Rankings (THE).
4. Andrew Trounson, "Science bias will affect local rankings" (9 June 2010). The Australian.
5. Steve Smith (16 September 2010). "Pride before the fall?". Times Higher Education World University Rankings.
6. "Global path for the best of British," (16 September 2010). Times Higher Education World University Rankings.
7. Wildavsky, Ben (2010). The Great Brain Race: How Global Universities are Reshaping the World. Princeton University Press.
8. Baty, Phil. "New data partner for World University Rankings". Times Higher Education. Retrieved 16 September 2010.
9. Mroz, Ann. "Leader: Only the best for the best". Times Higher Education. Retrieved 16 September 2010.
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11. 17 February 2010 12:00AM (17 February 2010). "Back to square one on the rankings front". The Australian. Retrieved 16 September 2010.
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13. Indira Samarasekera and Carl Amrhein. "Top schools don't always get top marks". The Edmonton Journal. Archived from the original on 2010-10-03.
14. Simon Beck and Adrian Morrow (16 September 2010). "Canada's universities make the grade globally". The Globe and Mail. Archived from the original on 2011-02-13.
15. http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-university-rankings/news/times-higher-education-announces-reforms-to-world-university-rankings Times Higher Education announces reforms to its World University Rankings.
16. "World University Rankings subject tables: Robust, transparent and sophisticated" (16 September 2010). Times Higher Education World University Rankings.
17. Baty, Phil. "THE unveils broad, rigorous new rankings methodology". Times Higher Education. Retrieved 16 September 2010.
18. Phil Baty, "World University Rankings launch date revealed" (5 September 2011). Times Higher Education.
19. Phil Baty. "The top 200 – and the best of the rest" (13 September 2011), Times Higher Education.
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25. http://www.cwts.nl/TvR/documents/AvR-Language-Scientometrics.pdf
26. Holmes, Richard (2006-09-05). "So That's how They Did It". Rankingwatch.blogspot.com. Retrieved 2 October 2014.
27. "Changingpublication patterns in the Social Sciences and Humanities 2000-2009" (PDF).
29. "LSE in university league tables – External Relations Division – Administrative and academic support divisions – Services and divisions – Staff and students – Home". London School of Economics. Retrieved 26 April 2010.
30. "Page not found".
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37. "Times Higher Education 150 Under 50 Rankings 2016". Times Higher Education. Retrieved 12 Apr 2016.
38. "TIMES Higher Education University Rankings by subjects (2013/14)".
39. John Morgan. "Times Higher Education World Reputation Rankings". Times Higher Education.
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External links

• Times Higher Education World University Rankings website
• Times Higher Education - World University Rankings 2016
• Times Higher Education - BRICS and Emerging Economies University Rankings 2016
• Times Higher Education - University Rankings by Subject 2016
• The top 100 world universities 2016 – THE rankings – The Telegraph
• University rankings: UK 'a stand-out performer' – BBC
• Interactive maps comparing the Times Higher Education, Academic Ranking of World Universities and QS World University Rankings