Another top-ten ranking
Another enthusiastic endorsement: ninth place for ETH Zurich in the prestigious THE rankings.
ETH Zurich has secured its first ever top-ten spot in the latest Times Higher Education World University Rankings(THE rankings). The ninth-place ranking is an improvement of four positions on last year. The QS rankings published a few weeks ago also put ETH in ninth position. Compared with last year, ETH Zurich scored relatively higher across all indicators except for the score teaching.
ETH President Lino Guzzella says: “I am positively surprised and delighted that ETH Zurich has now made the leap into the world’s top ten in the THE rankings,” a result that Guzzella sees as confirming the upward trend demonstrated by the QS rankings. “The highly qualified professors, staff and outstanding ETH students are to thank for this fantastic result,” he adds.
In order to maintain its excellent position, Guzzella explains, ETH must now continue its outstanding work in the fields of research and teaching: “It is and will remain a priority for us to stay among the leaders; the ranking is secondary.” He also appealed to politicians to maintain the financial support that has enabled ETH to achieve these results, in spite of the threatened reduction in federal financing: “ETH requires stable funding to maintain its position as a global leader in research, teaching and training.”
“An extraordinary achievement”
“The results are trusted by students and their families, academics, university leaders and governments. For ETH Zurich – Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich to make nine in the world is an outstanding achievement to be celebrated,” THE rankings chief editor Phil Baty emphazises in a press release.
In the recent THE rankings, the first three places go to universities from English-speaking countries: Caltech is in first position. The University of Oxford is in second place, while Stanford stands at third place. Harvard slipped from second to sixth place. With the rise of ETH Zurich in the top ten the University of Yale, UC Berkeley, UCLA and the University of Chicago dropped in their ranking.
Die THE World University Rankings
The external page THE World University Rankings were published for the 12th time this year. The rankings take into account 13 different indicators split into five groups: teaching, research, citations, international outlook and industry income. The indicators are based on data from 2012 and 2013. The ranking takes into account the publications from 2010 to 2014 and citations up to 2015. The two reputation indicators for teaching and research, weighted 15% and 18% respectively, are based on a 2014/15 peer survey.
This year the creators compared 800 universities – twice as many as last year. However, papers with more than 1,000 authors were removed from the citation’s indicator this year, which led to some dramatic ranking changes. The THE Ranking is published each year at the start of October.