No Dutch university in top 50 of Times ranking; Makers worried about gov't plans

Most Dutch universities have dropped slightly in the world rankings. Like last year, TU Delft is ranked highest. This year, the technical university ranked 56th, compared to the previous year’s 48th. This means that the Netherlands is no longer represented in the top 50 of the annual list of the Times Higher Education trade journal. The ranking makers are concerned about the Dutch government’s plans for education.

Seven other Dutch universities also dropped in the ranking, although often with just a few places. For example, Wageningen University & Research went from 65 to 67, and the University of Groningen from 79 to 80. The University of Amsterdam (from 61 to 58) and Leiden University (from 77 to 73) rose slightly.

The ranking makers are concerned about the plans of the new government. It wants to cut back on education and research. “The coalition has announced cutbacks and restrictions on foreign students and researchers. This increases the pressure on the sector in times of increasing international competition,” said Times Higher Education.

Erasmus University in Rotterdam dropped from 99 to 107. As a result, the Netherlands now has five universities in the top 100 in the world, the lowest number since 2012. Erasmus and five other universities are between 100th and 200th place. The makers point out that only four countries have more universities in the top 200 - the United States, Great Britain, Germany, and China.

The umbrella organization Universities of the Netherlands criticized the rankings. It is very difficult to express universities’ performance in figures, and calculating such an overview can lead to “arbitrary and questionable choices,” the umbrella organization said. Due to these concerns, Utrecht University did not provide any data to the ranking last year. As a result, the university was not included in the rankings and is also missing this year.

The British University of Oxford is the world’s best-ranked university for the ninth consecutive year. It is followed by the American universities MIT, Harvard, and Princeton. The British University of Cambridge is fifth. Stanford University in the U.S. has dropped from second to sixth place. The world’s top 10 also includes Caltech, Berkeley, Imperial College London, and Yale. All of these universities were also in the top 10 last year.

The ranking includes 2,092 universities in 115 countries and regions.