Monday, 23 September 2013 - 05:41
UvA Ranks 58 Worldwide
[A previous version of this story incorrectly swapped the rankings of University of Twente (228th) and Tilburg University (373rd).]
The new QS World University Rankings show no Dutch universities in the top 50. The best placed Dutch university is the UvA at place 58.
The Amsterdam Business School at the Universiteit van Amsterdam (courtesy ABS)
To get insight in the quality of universities worldwide, QS introduced in 2004 the World University Rankings. This is a very important ranking which tells universities how they perform in a global perspective. It is also an important ranking for students who want to study abroad or students who go for the best education worldwide.
In the top ten of this years’ ranking there are only US and UK universities. The MIT leads the world rankings again, after taking this position last year. It seems to be a trend that STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) oriented universities are increasingly making their presences felt at the top 50.
In the top 25 there are 14 US universities present, 6 universities from the UK, two from Switzerland, two from Canada and one from Singapore.
It is remarkable that countries like France, Germany, Italy and also the Netherlands can only be found at lower rankings.
The logo of the University of Amsterdam - Wikimedia
The University of Amsterdam (UvA) is the highest ranking Dutch university at place 58. At place 74 there is the University of Leiden, the university of Utrecht ranks 81, the Erasmus university of Rotterdam at 92, the university of Delft at 95 and the last Dutch university in the top 100 is the university of Groningen at the 97th spot.
That means that only six of the fourteen Dutch universities play a moderate role on world scale. Nevertheless, scores the Netherlands better than Germany, who have only three universities in the top 100, and much better than a country like Italy, who’s best university ranks at 188.
The University of Maastricht which tries to be an important international university only ranks at number 121. Teaching in English and even having all the meetings in English doesn’t seem to pay off. Comparing to last year the UM falls down 14 positions.
Remarkable is that the university of Wageningen doesn’t score better than the 150 position. Wageningen University is a well known university for agriculture. They do not only focus on agriculture in the Netherlands but also on projects for developing countries and are, in fact, well-known for that world wide.
A spokesman of Wageningen University says that the QS rankings is a difficult one for their small university. Simply because they don’t have so many subjects. According to him they are world class in their own small field of agriculture and they hope to reach once the top 100. This year they ranked 12 places better than last year.
The lowest ranking for Dutch universities is for the Tilburg University, at 373. University of Twente was edged out of the Top 200, placing at 228.
Of the 14 universities in the Netherlands only the Open University is not ranked.
QS, Quacquarelli Symonds, was founded in 1990 and has established itself as the leading global provider of specialist higher education and careers information and solutions.