ETH Zurich remains the top university in mainland Europe
This year’s QS rankings confirm ETH Zurich’s reputation as an excellent academic institution: it has once again been ranked 12th in the world. But it cannot afford to rest on its laurels – other universities are rapidly gaining ground.
ETH Zurich has achieved its highest overall rating of the past three years with a score of 95.3 in this year’s QS World University Rankings, placing it 12th in the world. As in 2013, US and UK universities make up all of the entries within the top ten: MIT is in the lead, followed by the University of Cambridge and Imperial College London.
In the current rankings table, ETH Zurich has improved in the indicators ‘academic reputation’ (from 18th to 17th place with 99.9 points for both years), ‘employer reputation’ (32nd to 28th with an increase from 97.9 to 98.6 points) and ‘faculty-student ratio’ (138th to 134th with an increase from 76.5 to 79.9). The latter indicator shows the most potential for improvement, but this will take some time to implement.
ETH unfortunately lost some ground on the score for ‘citations per faculty’ (from 39th to 44th, despite an increase from 94.9 to 97.1 points) and ‘international faculty’ (from 8th to 10th). The indicator ‘international students’ shows a downward trend, also reflected in a declining position (37th in comparison to 31st).
ETH is well positioned in the individual faculty areas, achieving third place in Engineering & Technology and fourth place in Natural Sciences. It is ranked 43rd for Life Sciences & Medicine, 60th for Social Sciences & Management and 160th for Arts & Humanities. In these latter four disciplines, the institution achieved the highest score for the indicators ‘citations per faculty’ and ‘employer reputation’.
Rankings are relative
Urs Hugentobler from the department of Finance and Controlling, who is responsible for evaluation of the rankings, is not concerned by the fall in rank for some of the indicators. “If we look at how the scores have developed from 2012 to 2014, it makes little sense to ascribe major significance to minor changes at the top of the QS rankings table.” After all, both ETH’s overall score and the scores of most indicators have improved. However, this does not necessarily lead to an improvement in rank, as the university’s position also depends on how institutions around it have developed.
This is also the case for the indicator ‘citation frequency’. “ETH has not declined in this area. A comparison of our score with those of other institutions suggests that they have simply improved more quickly than we have,” says Hugentobler. He also points out that ‘citations per faculty’ used in the QS rankings is not standardised across disciplines. The QS will adjust this rating for its next edition.
ETH Zurich is joined by three other Swiss institutions in the top 100 universities. EPFL has once again secured a place among the top 20 and improved its ranking from 19th in 2013 to 17th this year. University Zurich takes 57th place, while University of Geneva sneaks into the top 100 in 85th position.
QS rankings
Established in 2004, the QS World University Rankings now ranks 863 universities from around the world. In comparison to other rankings systems, the QS World University Rankings are heavily weighted in favour of the reputation a university enjoys in expert circles. The results of a survey conducted among university professors regarding the reputation of the individual universities constituted 40 per cent of the overall result. Moreover, those responsible for the rankings asked employers how highly they rated graduates from the individual universities, which amounted to 10 per cent of the overall score. Other indicators included the faculty-student ratio (20 per cent), average citation frequency per researcher (20 per cent) and the proportion of foreign scientists and students at the university (5 per cent each).