Every year, Times Higher Education (THE) releases their rankings of the best higher education institutions in the world, based on relevant data gathered from universities all over the globe. Some of the most important criteria used to create the rankings are:
- the university teaching environment
- the institutional research and influence
- the industry income
- internationality
Overall, 22 countries are represented in the top 200 list, which uses data from 800 universities from 70 countries in the overall THE World University Rankings.
Leading universities from the European top 200 are equal to or surpass many Ivy League universities from the United States, competing for the title of global higher education leader. The yearly list of top-ranked universities offers students a great way to compare their international study options and decide what is the best undergraduate or graduate degree to pursue in the next academic year.
Here are a few notable developments to keep in mind for this academic year, according to Times Higher Education Rankings:
- The University of Oxford takes the 1st place in the rankings for the fourth consecutive year.
- Nearly a quarter of the universities in the top 200 ranking are from the UK.
- The UK is followed by Germany, with over 45 institutions overall. German universities offer excellent research opportunities and attractive conditions for international students.
- The countries with high performing universities compared to the size of their population are the Scandinavian countries (Sweden, Finland, and Denmark), Ireland and Switzerland.
Here are the top 20 universities in Europe, according to Times Higher Education European Rankings:
- University of Oxford (UK)
- University of Cambridge (UK)
- Imperial College London (UK)
- ETH Zürich - Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (Switzerland)
- University College London (UCL) (UK)
- London School of Economics and Political Science (UK)
- University of Edinburgh (UK)
- Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU) Munich (Germany)
- King's College London (UK)
- Karolinska Institute (Sweden)
- Technische Universität München (Germany)
- University of Heidelberg (Germany)
- École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (Switzerland)
- KU Leuven (Belgium)
- PSL Research University Paris (France)
- Wageningen University and Research Center (The Netherlands)
- University of Amsterdam (The Netherlands)
- Leiden University (The Netherlands)
- Erasmus University of Rotterdam (The Netherlands)
- University of Zurich (Switzerland)
Also check out the top universities in the UK and the top universities in Switzerland, according to Times Higher Education 2021 and Shanghai Ranking 2020. If you also want to see how students feel about some of these prestigious universities, you can always check their reviews: