I know. A lot can be said against the use of university rankings and even more against their methodologies. That said….the Times Higher education Supplement published their annual ranking of technology universities and institutions last Friday. The ranking is based on peer review assessment and on the number of citations per paper. They created 3 lists: one for technology universities, one for non-university institutions in science and one for non-university institutions in technology. Below are some of the results. In my view there are two important observations:
– The stable high positions of Asian universities. There are 4 Asian universities in the top 10 and 7 in the top 20. Continental Europe on the other hand, only has 2 universities in the top 20 (ETH Zurich and TU Delft). The non-university institutions on the other hand are located mainly in the US and some in the UK, Australia and Europe. But none in Asia.
– Another interesting observation is that the number of citations per paper is considerably higher in non-university institutions, especially for the institutions involved in science. Furthermore, most of the universities in the top 10 are public while many of the non-universities are private organisations. A shift in knowledge production from the public to the private domain?
Click here to see the rankings
