Thirteen Dutch universities on top 200 world ranking

For the first time ever 13 Dutch universities made it onto the Top 200 of the Times Higher Education World University Ranking, which was published on Wednesday. Though a number of the Netherlands' universities did have to settle for a lower position than they had last year, the Financieele Dagblad reports.

TU Delf is the highest ranked Dutch university at position 59, followed by the University of Amsterdam on 63rd place. Both universities moved up in the rankings. Wageningen is the next best Dutch university at 65th place, though the university did drop from the top 50 position it had last year.

Erasmus University Rotterdam and Leiden University both moved up slightly and ended in 69th and 77th place respectively.

The other Dutch universities on the rankings are University of Groningen (80), Utrecht University (86), Maastricht University (94), Radboud University Nijmegen (121), University of Twente (153), VU University Amsterdam (156), Eindhoven University of Technology (177) and Tilburg University (198).

The Dutch association of universities VSNU is delighted with the outcome. "But the results are not everything", a spokesperson said to FD "Rankings never give a complete picture of the performance of universities."

The top five consists solely of universities in the United Kingdom and United States. The University of Oxford (UK) came in first place, followed in order by the California Institute of Technology (US), Stanford University (US), University of Cambridge (UK) and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (US).