The Ranking Agency RUR announces the release of the 8th version of the International Round University Ranking – Reputation Ranking 2017.

Global Survey

The RUR 2017 rating includes as many universities as there are in the general rating, i.e. 763 universities from 72 countries. At the same time, it is worth noting that the first ten countries accumulate 72% of the total number of universities since many countries are represented by 1-2 universities only.

In terms of the total number of participating universities, the US remains the undisputed leader; it is represented by 140 universities, which is one institution fewer than in 2016. The United Kingdom ranks second with 73 participants. Russia closes the top three leaders because its universities have increased their presence in the rating of RUR by almost 3 times for a year – from 23 in 2016 to 66 in 2017. Such a significant increase in the number of Russian universities is primarily due to a special project of competitiveness increase (Academic Excellence Project). The fourth and the fifth positions are shared by Japan and China represented by 40 participating universities.

It should be noted that the so-called «Greater China» (PRC, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macao) actually occupied the second place in the world. 40 participating universities out of 81 from China Mainland are from China, 36 from Taiwan, 4 from Hong Kong, and 1 from Macao.

Distribution of universities in the world are presented in more detail in the table below:

The first 10 countries by the number of participants in the rehearsal rating of RUR 2017:

  Country Number of participating institutions Share
1 USA 140 18.4%
2 United Kingdom 73 9.6%
3 Russia 67 8.8%
4 China 40 5.2%
4 Japan 40 5.2%
5 Taiwan 36 4.7%
6 Australia 26 3.4%
7 Germany 25 3.3%
8 Canada 21 2.8%
8 Italy 21 2.8%
8 Spain 21 2.8%
9 Republic of Korea 20 2.6%
10 Turkey 14 1.8%

World leaders

Compared with 2016, distribution of higher education institutions within the first ten remained actually unchanged. Nine out of ten universities have maintained their leading positions in the global top ten. One university left the list - this is Duke University - and one more was included in the world leaders list – it is Princeton University. The first ten universities in the RUR World University Ranking 2017 are listed below according to the changes in their positions.

World TOP 10:

  1. Harvard University, USA
  2. Stanford University (+1)
  3. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (-1)
  4. University of California, Berkeley (+1)
  5. University of Cambridge)
  6. University of Oxford
  7. Princeton University (+2)
  8. University of Michigan (+3)
  9. University of California, Los Angeles (-2)
  10. Yale University (-3)

Harvard University’s reputation has remained unchanged and it has taken the first position in the world for 8 years of the RUR rating passing ahead the nearest competitor 3 times by the number of votes. As the above list shows, the dynamics in the TOP-10 is minimal. Three out of ten universities retained their positions in comparison with 2016, three more universities changed their positions by 1 line. Finally, two universities changed their positions by two and three lines respectively. And only one university (University of Michigan) entered the TOP-10 rising from the eleventh position to the eighth.

The first hundred represents universities from 20 countries and 48 of them are the US universities and 8 are Great Britain’s.

Reputation of Universities by Regions

2017 showed extremely interesting results. Three main regions containing more than 85% of the universities showed a negative trend in the average positions of universities. Asia lost 3%, Europe - 14%, North America - 9%.

In contrast, the regions represented by a relatively small number of universities showed significant growth. African universities showed + 35% growth in the average position of universities, Latin America’s - 35%, Oceania’s - 22%.