Following the research of analysts on a yearly basis, Times Higher Education, the ranking of the best universities in the world, is compiled. This year, it included over 1600 institutions from 99 countries. They were analyzed based on 13 core indicators that gave an indication of the performance of these institutions in four areas related to teaching, knowledge transfer, research and international perspectives.

Additionally, this year experts have examined over 108 million citations published in more than 14.4 million scientific papers. On top of that, about 22 thousand scientists from different countries of the world were surveyed, and their answers were taken into account as well. In total, 1662 universities were included in the ranking. An additional 452 universities provided their data for the ranking as well, but didn’t make it through the selection process.

According to the research results, the TOP-5 includes:

  1. Oxford.
  2. California Tech Institute.
  3. Harvard.
  4. Stanford.
  5. Cambridge.

The first and fifth places in the list belong to British universities, the rest of the TOP-5 places have gone to American institutions. The highest position (158th) among educational institutions in the CIS was awarded to the Lomonosov University in Russia. The Ukrainian Sumy State University made the 501st position of the ranking. Minsk’s Belarusian State University got the 1200th place overall.

When compiling the list, analysts revealed a number of noteworthy facts:

  • for the first time, two Chinese universities entered the TOP-20 at once: the Universities of Beijing and Tsinghua, which both share the 16th position;
  • the country with the most universities in the ranking is the USA, with a total of 183 institutions (57 of which are in the TOP-200);
  • in terms of the number of institutions included in the TOP-200, China moved up to 5th place (last year it was 7th), leaving Canada behind and now standing on par with the Netherlands;
  • universities of six countries that were absent from the ranking last year have now made it to the TOP: Ecuador, Azerbaijan, Fiji, Ethiopia, Palestine and Tanzania.