Organisation - October 9, 2009

Wageningen University slips in world rankings

The latest world university rankings of the Times Higher Education Supplement (THES) find Wageningen University at the 155th place, 13 down from last year's placing, and with its lowest score ever.

Lowest is in any case relative. The THES list has been published only since 2004. Wageningen did not make it to the top 200 in the first year of this annual list. In 2005, 'we' entered the list nicely at the 108 th position. In 2006, we even came within the top hundred (97 th ). After that began the descent. The university fell to the 148 th  place two years ago. This could be blamed on the introduction of another grading system. Last year saw a slight recovery - to the 142 nd place - but we are now ranked 155 th . Not that bad yet, since there are thousands of universities all over the world.
The Netherlands
Dutch institutions as a whole have put up a good show. Only Nijmegen is not among the top 200.




49
60
70
83
108
116
120
138
155
165
200


University of Amsterdam
Leiden University
Utrecht University
Delft University of Technology
Erasmus University Rotterdam
Maastricht University
Eindhoven University of Technology
University of Groningen
Wageningen University
VU University Amsterdam
University of Twente




Overseas universities
The top positions in the THES list have been dominated for the umpteenth time by Harvard, Cambridge and Yale. The Times ranks universities mainly according to their reputation with academics, the private sector and students. Besides these qualitative scores, countable criteria are also used, such as the number of citations per researcher, the staff-student ratio and the percentage of foreign employees and students. Wageningen is thumbs up mainly in the areas of international orientation (97 on a scale of 100), staff-student ratio (87) and citation score (82).
New list
The Netherlands has done well in the country category. After America (54) and England (29), it is third (with Canada and Japan) on the list of countries with the most universities in the top 200. The first sixteen universities on the list are either American or English. The European Union has therefore commissioned the drawing up of a new ranking system this summer. Leiden and Twente are among those involved in this process.