British universities doing very well, 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th in world top ten, despite lower funding,

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-24024767

- maybe the UK children are taught to think and not learn by numbers.

- maybe the results are achieved by all the foreign students.. (See post # 6 below )

"The UK invests below the OECD average in higher education, so it is unrealistic to expect
its universities to continue to punch above their weight indefinitely," said John O'Leary.

.

Nah. Brits are just more intelligent than everyone else

Hey, no need for the rest of you to feel hurt. At least I didn't say you're all more stupid than we are.

Okay folks, please... just put those axes and pitchforks down...

Two of the top 20 are Swiss which isn't bad going for such a small country.

and you forgot to mention this sub-headline

is this the quality of life survey for universities?

I used to think rather smugly that this was true, but a recent review article in the Economist (hope that's not behind a paywall) has raised doubts in my mind:

"Though America’s grim education results come in for special drubbing in this book, the country is not alone in failing to teach its children how to think critically. This, at least, is the view of Andreas Schleicher, the “educational scientist” behind what is known as the Program for International Student Assessment, or the PISA test. If most exams quantify students’ ability to memorise material, this one aims to assess their effectiveness at problem-solving. Since 2000 it has been administered to millions of teenagers in more than 40 countries, with surprising results. Pupils in Finland, Korea, Japan and Canada consistently score much higher than their peers in Germany, Britain, America and France."

My bold.

Which would indicate to me that UK has a few decent universities (Oxbridge and in the capitals), but the rest are pretty run-of-the-mill/dire.

Glad to see OH went to number 4

What no Leicester Poly on the list

Er... It's not called that anymore. But a fine institution nevertheless.

As has often been pointed out, this kind of ranking is very subjective.

One striking point is how many of the top few are technical only: Impewial College (bin there), MIT, EPFL, ETHZ.... to name a few. None of these have arts or social sciences to spoil the averages for publications, patents or many other metrics that this list obviously uses.

These elite institutions are run more or less outside the state system, taking the best students from wherever they can get them, so their success reflects little on either their host country's education system or the quality of that country's youth.

Our latest french intern is just back from a Masters at Imperial College. In some of her classes ALL the other students were chinese.

__________________
Whatever works

18/20 in the anglosphere.

The company behind the ranking is British, so usual bias, as with all similar rankings (French B-schools tend to boast about the FT ones, especially in Finance, while French Universities keep b*tching about the Shanghai one).

Good point, DB! In the end, we should take these lists about as seriously as the ones for "The world's best restaurant" (currently Noma in Copenhagen - earth & ants anyone?). The result depends totally on the metrics & since there can be no universal definition of "best" in either the case, the answer is very arbitrary.

Well said. It depends what criteria they use to determine 'best'.

If you ask some of my fiends what constitutes a good university to them they'd probably say one with good pubs in the vicinity and a good night life. I don't suppose that was one of things they took into account for this survey.

That's an interesting metric. I would be interested to see the rating. If they include pictures, they may even convince me to go for a second degree!

Certainly many of my 6th Formers in the UK chose Unis with the best clubbing scene. But good point DB- people often asked me in the UK which was the best school in my area- and what I would judge to be an excellent school, would be seen as a disaster for others, and vice-versa- some of the schools our friends fought tooth and nail to get their kids into, were not at all what we would have chosen for our children.

The West Yorkshire School for Young Miscreants fared well for me.