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The University of Oxford has retained the number one spot in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings for a ninth year in a row, but the reputation of the wider UK sector is rapidly eroding, with a similar trend seen in the US.
Oxford’s reign is now the longest in the history of the league table, beating Harvard’s eight-year stint which ended in 2011. The institution’s performance has been bolstered by significant improvements in its income from industry and the number of patents that cite its research, as well as its teaching scores.
Compared with other institutions in the top five, Oxford’s international outlook – particularly its proportion of international students and international co-authorship – makes it stand out.
Across the Atlantic, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is now the US’ highest-ranked university, in second place globally, its best-ever performance. It replaces Stanford University, which has dropped from second to sixth, its lowest position since 2010, driven by declining scores for teaching, research environment and international outlook.
Harvard University has moved from fourth to third place, and Princeton University from sixth to fourth. MIT and Princeton are proving to be dark horses, with the data revealing steady improvements in their positions over the past decade.
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But while the top of the ranking is still dominated by US and UK institutions, the data behind it reveals a more worrisome trend: both countries are seeing a rapid decline in their average research and teaching reputation.
The UK’s teaching reputation has dropped by 3 per cent since last year and research reputation by 5 per cent, based on more than 93,000 responses to THE’s Academic Reputation Survey, in which academics choose up to 15 institutions they believe excel in teaching and, separately, research.
UK institutions now take 13 per cent of the share of votes for teaching and 12.8 per cent for research, representing a steady decline over the past decade from 18.9 per cent and 18.1 per cent respectively.
