Latest: World Reputation Rankings 2012
The world’s top 100 universities ranked by reputation alone, based on the largest international survey of academic opinion ever undertaken.
Top 100 world universities by reputation
World University Rankings 2011-2012
Welcome to Times Higher Education’s list of the world’s top universities for 2011-2012.
The Times Higher Education World University Rankings were developed in concert with our rankings data provider, Thomson Reuters, with expert input from more than 50 leading figures in the sector from 15 countries across every continent. We believe we have created the gold standard in international university performance comparisons.
Our rankings of the top universities across the globe employ 13 separate performance indicators designed to capture the full range of university activities, from teaching to research to knowledge transfer. These 13 elements are brought together into five headline categories, which are:
- Teaching — the learning environment (worth 30 per cent of the overall ranking score)
- Research — volume, income and reputation (worth 30 per cent)
- Citations — research influence (worth 30 per cent)
- Industry income — innovation (worth 2.5 per cent)
- International outlook — staff, students and research (worth 7.5 per cent).
The overall world top 200 rankings, the banded lists of a further 200 "best of the rest" universities, and the six tables showing the top 50 institutions by subject are based on criteria and weightings that were carefully selected after extensive consultation. We recognise that different users have different priorities, so to allow everyone to make the most of our exceptionally rich data and gain a personalised view of global higher education, the tables on this site can be manipulated. Users can rank institutions by their performance in any one of the five broad headline categories to create bespoke tables or make regional comparisons via our area analyses.
For even richer and deeper analysis, download our free Times Higher Education World University Rankings iPhone application, which allows you to change the weightings of our five broad indicators, filter results by country and region, and match your personalised rankings against cost-of-living and undergraduate tuition-fees data.