Shanghai Ranking: Utrecht University again the best
Utrecht University (UU) is the best university in the Netherlands, according to the international Shanghai ranking. However, it is doing worse than in 2011. Last year it was on the 48th place, while this year it took 53rd place. The University of Tilburg ends again somewhere between 400th and 500th place. The university thus scores the worst of all Dutch universities.
The Academic Ranking of World Universities use different criteria. For example, they base their score on how often a scientist from a university was cited and published in journals such as Science and Nature.
Leiden University is on the 73rd place. The Radboud University (Nijmegen), University of Groningen, Wageningen University, the Vrije Universiteit (Amsterdam) and UVA (also Amsterdam) also have a place at the top 150 positions. Rotterdam ended up between places 151 and 200, Maastricht and Delft are between 201 and 300, Eindhoven and Twente are placed between 301 and 400.
Nobody at TiU was available yesterday to explain the university being on the 13th place (on the national ranking).The low score of Tilburg University last year was explained by the fact that alpha studies (humanities and social sciences) are a main focus of the institution, while Nature and Science journal publishes mostly about science, (bio) medical sciences and technology.
Harvard is at the very top of this year’s ranking. The second, third and fourth places are also American institutions: Stanford, MIT and Berkeley. The first European university is in the fifth place, and it’s the English Cambridge.
