World Universities Reputation Rankings 2018

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THE World Reputation Rankings 2018: results announced

The University of Chicago remains in ninth place for the second year but it is joined by the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), which makes the top 10 for the first time since 2014, after rising four places.
The US still dominates the table with 44 universities, up from 42 last year, although it is worth noting that this year’s table includes 105 universities, four more than last year, as a result of joint scores.
The UK has nine universities, one fewer than last year. Six of these, including all four of its London representatives, have declined.
China and Germany jointly claim the title of the third-most represented nation, with six institutions each. But half of the representatives in each country have fallen down the list.
In the case of Germany, questions have been raised over whether its Excellence Initiative has created meaningful differentiation in its higher education system.
Meanwhile, signs of decline in China, after years of consistent progress, suggest that predictions of the country’s continued higher education rise may have been overstated or premature – although its two most prestigious players, Tsinghua and Peking, have maintained their positions in the top 20.

Asia’s leading universities still lack the global standing that is enjoyed by many of their peers in the UK and the US, according to Times Higher Education’s list of the world’s most prestigious universities.

Analysis of the THE World Reputation Rankings 2018, which is based on a survey of leading scholars, shows that many Asian universities that make the top 100 list tend to get the majority of their votes from academics based within their own country – even though they have been rising up the THE World University Rankings in recent years.

A separate analysis of individual institutions in the table reveals that even the most well-regarded Asian universities do not have high levels of prestige outside the continent.

The University of Tokyo – the region’s top-ranked university, in the list at 13th place – received almost 80 per cent of its votes from within Asia

And while Tsinghua University, at 14th place, received more votes from North America this year, the majority of its votes (71 per cent) were again from Asian scholars. It is a similar story for both the National University of Singapore and the University of Hong Kong.

In contrast, Harvard University – which took the number one spot for the eighth consecutive year – received just 26 per cent of votes from academics in North America, and similar shares from scholars based in Europe (27 per cent) and Asia (38 per cent).

The University of Cambridge (fourth) also received a relatively even spread of votes by region, although, in continental Europe, universities still tend to draw their strongest support from within their region.

The overall rankings results show that several Asian universities have slipped this year. Half of China’s six representatives and four of Japan’s five institutions have dropped places.

Simon Marginson, director of UCL’s Centre for Global Higher Education, said that the regional difference in voting patterns can be explained in part by the fact there is a lag between “improved real performance and the reputational effects it generates”.

The top research universities in the US and the UK “earned their reputations over the whole 20th century and beyond and have not slipped in standard, so they are difficult to displace”, he said, whereas universities in South Korea and Singapore “only really showed themselves as strong in the 1990s, and China’s rise is essentially post-2000”.

The World Reputation Rankings are based on an invitation-only opinion survey of senior, published academics, who were asked to name no more than 15 universities that they believed were the best for research and teaching in their field.

World Reputation Rankings 2018: top 10

Reputation rank 2018	Reputation rank 2017	World rank 2018	University	Country
1	1	6	Harvard University	United States
2	2	5	MIT (Cambridge, MA)	United States
3	3	=3	Stanford University	United States
4	=4	2	University of Cambridge	United Kingdom
5	=4	1	University of Oxford	United Kingdom
6	6	18	University of California, Berkeley	United States
7	7	7	Princeton University	United States
8	8	12	Yale University	United States
=9	13	15	University of California, Los Angeles	United States
=9	9	9	University of Chicago	United States

Different routes up, similar dangers ahead

Diversity can be an asset that bolsters a university and its reputation, but risks must be minded and managed

The universities at the top of the Times Higher Education World University Rankings have many similar qualities: they produce high-quality, groundbreaking research, deliver innovative education and have strong relationships with their local and global communities.

But one university has a rarer attribute that makes these achievements even more impressive. KU Leuven is the only university in the top 50 of the table with an open admissions system, says its rector Luc Sels.

“In Flanders, we have an open intake system so we cannot refuse students. If students want to come and take a programme in KU Leuven, they are all welcome,” he explains.

“This combination of being very strong in research and at the same time being very democratic and open – and allowing all students to study with us – is a difficult combination, a very challenging one for us, but we are quite proud of what we accomplish in being able to combine those two.”

This democratic quality is extended to the staff, too. Deans and the rector are not appointed but elected by academics. As a result, staff “feel really embedded in the system – they remain loyal to the system” and the university has a “very low degree of voluntary turnover of researchers and professors”, says Sels.

Browse the full Times Higher Education World Reputation Rankings 2018 results

View this year’s World Reputation Rankings methodology in full

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