It is the time of the year when high school graduates and their parents are excitedly making plans for the future, awaiting emails from university admission officers and researching world’s best universities courses descriptions.
The Center for World University Rankings (CWUR) has just released its 2018-2019 World University Rankings. For the seventh year in a row Harvard has been ranked as the top global university. This year, the global top-10 is as follows (with last year’s rankings in parentheses):
1. Harvard University (1)
2. Stanford University (2)
3. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (3)
4. University of Cambridge (4)
5. University of Oxford (5)
6. University of California, Berkeley (7)
7. Princeton University (9)
8. Columbia University (6)
9. California Institute of Technology (11)
10. University of Chicago (8)
CWUR’s rankings grade universities on seven factors without relying on surveys and university data submissions: quality of teaching, alumni employment, quality of faculty, research output, quality publications, influence, and citations. The methodology has been enhanced this year, with research now accounting for 70% of the total score.
The US has eight representatives in the top-10, which has been the case since the rankings started in 2012, and 213 out of the top 1000. The number of Chinese universities in the top 1000 is 108 institutions this year, up from 97 in 2017 and 90 in 2016. Seven out of the nine institutions of the C9 League saw improvements this year.
The top 10 UK universities have all improved or maintained places compared to last year. Of the 24 members of the Russell Group, only four have lost ground. The University of Cambridge ranks as the top public university in the world for the 5th year in a row. The number of French institutions in the top 1000 is now 58, up from 44 last year. Sorbonne University is the top French institution this year, ranking 29th worldwide.
Two German universities, Heidelberg and Munich, enter the top 50 for the first time, with nine of the top ten German institutions improving their rankings from last year. Only five universities from Russia, led by Moscow State University at number 126, feature in the top 1000. Elsewhere, the University of Melbourne ranks first in Oceania, the University of São Paulo tops Latin America, and the University of Cape Town ranks highest in Africa.
The US leads with 213 universities in the top 1000, followed by China (108), the United Kingdom (62), France (58), and Japan (56). Germany (54), Italy (45), Spain (38), South Korea (35), and Canada (28) round up the top 10 countries. In total, 61 countries have representatives in the top 1000.