Australia Higher Education times: This drop suggests that the “extent to which businesses are willing to pay for research” by Cambridge and the University’s “ability to attract funding in the commercial marketplace” has taken a hit this year.
The rankings are intended to “underline the shifting strength of higher education and research around the world”, a press release to Varsity detailed, with the methodology particularly focusing on the research capacity and influence of higher education institutions.
Cambridge is not the only UK university that struggled to perform in this year’s league table. Imperial for the first time in a decade dropped out of the top 10 to 11th in the rankings.
The World University Ranking of the English magazine Times Higher Education ranks the top 400 universities worldwide based on qualitative and quantitative indicators. The methodology differs from QS by increasing the number of indicators taken into account.
The Times Higher Education has the ambition to cover the 3 missions of universities: teaching, research, and knowledge transfer. To that end, it utilizes 13 indicators grouped in 5 categories.
The World University Ranking of the English magazine Times Higher Education ranks the top 400 universities worldwide based on qualitative and quantitative indicators.
Australia Higher Education times differ from QS by increasing the number of indicators taken into account. The Times Higher Education has the ambition to cover the 3 missions of universities: teaching, research, and knowledge transfer.
Times Higher Education World University Ranking
| Criterion | Indicator | Weight |
| Citations – research influence | 1 – Citations impact (normalized average citations per paper) (Database: Thomson Reuter’s Web of Science) | 30% |
| Teaching – the learning environment | 1 – Income per academic 2 – Reputational survey – teaching 3 – Ph.D. awards per academic 4 – Ph.D. awards/bachelor’s awards 5 – Undergraduates admitted per academic | 30% |
| Research – volume, income, and reputation | 1- Papers academic and research staff 2 – Research income (scaled) 3 – Reputation survey – research | 30% |
| International mix – staff and students | 1 – Ratio of international to domestic students 2 – Ratio of international to domestic staff 3 – Proportion of internationally co-authored research papers | 7.5% |
| Industry income – innovation | 1 – Research income from industry (per academic staff) |
Any institution in the world should be able to get high-quality comparable data about similar institutions around the globe which can help it benchmark and improve its performance.
We’re still decades away from this. Developing this kind of data on topics other than research takes a lot of time and a lot of conversations. But the trend is now moving in this direction much more quickly than it was even a couple of years ago.
