Uppsala in 111th place in new world ranking
Uppsala University comes in 111th place when Times Higher Education (THE) ranks the world’s best universities for 2021. Like most other Swedish universities, Uppsala comes slightly lower than in last year’s THE ranking.
The Times Higher Education (THE) World University Rankings 2021 covers 1,000 universities worldwide and is based on 13 different indicators in five categories, weighted as follows:
- Teaching 30%
- Research 30%
- Citations 30%
- Industry income (knowledge transfer) 2.5%
- International outlook (staff, students and research) 7.5%
Karolinska Institutet is the top Swedish higher education institution in this list, in 36th place. Next come four universities in the 100–200 range (last year’s position in parentheses): Lund 103 (96), Uppsala 111 (102), Stockholm 183 (175) and Gothenburg 191 (186).
The main reason why Uppsala University has lost ground in the overall rankings is a slight decline in the score for ‘Teaching’. This is due partly to a smaller number of doctoral students and partly to the University’s ‘reputation’ in this category. On the other hand, the University’s score in the ‘Internationalisation’ category has gone up. In the ‘Research’ category, Uppsala University is ranked 98th.
Oxford, Stanford and Harvard lead the way in the new league table. The US still dominates the ranking with eight universities in the top 10 and no fewer than 37 in the top 100. Chinese higher education institutions have advanced in this year’s list. China now has six universities in the top 100, including one in the top 20 (Tsinghua University).
“This year, Uppsala University has slipped a few places in several of the lists we monitor. The reasons vary, but the results underline the importance of continued efforts across a broad front to enhance our research, improve our education and step up our collaboration – which is just what we emphasise in the University’s new Mission, Goals and Strategies document,” says Deputy Vice-Chancellor Anders Malmberg. “But as I usually point out in these connections, ranking results always have to be taken with a good pinch of salt!”
About university rankings
University rankings are an attempt to compare and rank a large number of higher education institutions in ‘league tables’, often in terms of quality. The ranking lists are normally put together by media companies, state authorities or organisations of one kind or another, not by the universities themselves.
Ranking lists can be based on various types of sources:
- official statistics (national or from a particular higher education institution)
- bibliometrics (analysis of scholarly articles published and their impact)
- analyses carried out via the internet, for example, surveys targeting higher education institutions, students, employers etc.
After gathering a large amount of information from these various sources, different aspects (indicators) are weighed against each other and combined to produce a final figure that can be presented as a score or measure of quality for a particular university.
The following university rankings are among the oldest, best-known internationally and most prominent in the media (with Uppsala University’s current position in parentheses):
- Times Higher Education World University Rankings (THE) (111)
- QS World University Rankings (124)
- Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU), the ‘Shanghai Ranking’ (77)
These three rankings aim to capture both education and research, but focus mostly on research. This is particularly the case for ARWU, which concentrates almost exclusively on research excellence.