The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH) has come out 11th in the world in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2023, sharing this spot with Columbia University in the USA. The rankings include 1,799 universities across 104 countries and regions, reportedly making them the largest and most diverse university rankings to date. The table is based on 13 “carefully calibrated” performance indicators that measure an institution’s performance across four areas: teaching, research, knowledge transfer and international outlook. ETH scored 97.7 points out of a maximum of 100 for international outlook and 95.4 points for research.
All spots ahead of ETH are taken by universities in the UK and the USA. The University of Oxford has topped the ranking, ahead of both Harvard and Cambridge. After ETH, the next European universities can be found in 29th, 30th and 33rd place, namely the University of Edinburgh, the Technical University of Munich and the Ludwig-Maximilian-University Munich. The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL) is at 41 in the rankings, while the University of Zurich is at 83 and the Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW) comes in the grouping 801 to 1,000.
From 2011 to 2023, ETH has always achieved a ranking between 9th and 15th. According to the authors this year, “the university makes a notable contribution to the global science and technology industry”.
When it comes to the male to female ratio of students, it is notable that the male percentage at ETH is higher than at all other institutions in the list, aside from a few exceptions. The 2023 ranking also shows that the supremacy of North American universities in the area of research is diminishing, with China, but also Africa and Oceania catching up.
