World’s Prestigious Unis, Named

The world’s biggest invitation-only academic opinion survey, the Academic Reputation Survey, received more than 10,000 responses from 133 nations in 15 languages. The survey uses United Nations data as a guide to ensure the world scholarship is represented by the response coverage of this questionnaire.

The Times Higher Education (THE) then administered the survey to experienced and published scholars who are able to provide opinions on excellence in research and teaching in their respective disciplines.

Reputation calculation

Survey responses were distributed as follows - 19% of responses from North America, 33% from the Asia Pacific area, 27% from Western Europe, 11% from Eastern Europe, 6% from Latin America region, 3% from the Middle East and 2% from Africa.

In the survey, scholars are asked based on their own experience and specific subject discipline by naming no more than 15 universities that they believe are the best in research and teaching.

The scores obtained put more weight to research with a ratio of 2:1 as THE expert advisers believe that respondents can make more accurate judgements about research quality. The scores for both categories were based on the number of times an institution is cited by respondents as being the best in their field.

Completing the top 10 are:

6. University of California, Berkeley

7. Princeton University

8. Yale University

9. Columbia University

10. California Institute of Technology

(Cover photo source: timeshighereducation.com)