Swedish universities climb in global ranking

Five Swedish universities are among the top 200 globally, according to the latest Times Higher Education ranking, including one that cracked the top 40 for the first time since 2011. Karolinska Institute near Stockholm is Sweden’s highest-ranked university in the 2013-14 World University Rankings, claiming the 36th spot overall, an improvement of six spots from last year’s 42nd place. The improvement also left Karolinska as the seventh-highest ranked university in Europe. Stockholm University came in as the second-highest ranked Swedish university at 103rd place, nearly cracking the top 100 globally for the first time. Uppsala University, the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), and Lund University all also landed among the top 200 universities on the Times Higher Education list. While Stockholm, KTH, and Karolinska all saw their rankings improve from last year, Lund saw its position among the world’s best universities tumble from 82nd place last year to 123rd in the 2013-2014 ranking. Overall, European universities fared less well in the latest Times Higher Education ranking, which measures 13 separate performance indicators to assess universities strengths in teaching, research, knowledge transfer and international outlook. However, Sweden and its Scandinavian neighbours emerged as a bright spot in an otherwise sombre assessments of European universities’ global reputation. “With worrying signs of decline across Europe, Scandinavia’s leading institutions have bucked the trend,” Times Higher Education editor Phil Baty said in a statement. “Sweden has five top 200 institutions, Denmark three, and Finland and Norway one. Scandinavia’s strong commitment to the public funding of universities has obviously served its countries well in global competition.” The global top-ten was dominated by American and British universities, with the California Institute of Technology retaining the top spot, while Harvard shared second place with Oxford University in the UK. Next on the list were Stanford University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Princeton University, with University of Cambridge coming in at number seven. The University of California-Berkeley, the University of Chicago, and Imperial College London rounded out the top ten. Other Swedish universities included among the top 400 globally in the Times Higher Education ranking include the University of Gothenburg, the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Chalmers University of Technology, Linköping University, and Umeå University. Source: Education News