THE World Reputation Rankings: UK’s university ‘golden triangle’ strengthens grip

11th March 2015, 9:00pm

The “golden triangle” of Oxford, Cambridge and London has strengthened its grip on the UK’s higher education system, according to the latest global reputation rankings from TES’s sister title Times Higher Education.

The THE World Reputation Rankings 2015, published today, placed Cambridge, Oxford, Imperial College London and University College London in the top 20 universities in the world, with Cambridge and Oxford taking second and third place respectively.

London universities rose up the table since 2014, with UCL moving from 25th place to 17th, the London School of Economics rising two places to 22nd and King’s College London jumping from 43rd to 31st.

Meanwhile Warwick and Durham universities were new entries in the top 100, both placed in the 81-90 group. The rankings place those below the top 50 in bands of 10.

The US continues to dominate the table, with 26 of the top 50 places. Harvard University kept its place at the top of the global list, with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Stanford University also making the top five.

Germany remained the third strongest nation, with six institutions in the top 10. Russian and Chinese universities also had a strong year, with Russia’s Moscow State University and China’s Tsinghua and Peking universities receiving their highest-ever rankings.

However, both Israel and Turkey lost their only top 100 representatives, the Technion Israel Institute of Technology and the Middle East Technical University, respectively.

The rankings are based on a global invitation-only opinion poll carried out in partnership with Elsevier. The 2015 results were drawn from 10,507 survey responses from published senior academics who reported an average of 15 years working in higher education.

Phil Baty, editor of Times Higher Education Rankings, said: “A university’s global academic reputation is vital - it not only influences investments and funding decisions, but more importantly, it helps a university to develop and nurture its single greatest asset: its student and academic talent.”

British universities take on American might in THE rankings - 3 October, 2013

China tops university rankings - 3 December, 2014