This report presents the results for the sixth annual Universitas 21 ranking of national systems of higher education and explains the methodology. Fifty national systems of higher education, from all continents, are evaluated on the basis of 25 attributes.
Variables are standardised for population size. Countries are ranked overall and in each of four areas: Resources, Environment, Connectivity and Output. An important aim of our work is to permit countries to benchmark performance against other countries at similar stages of development. In order to facilitate these comparisons, we present estimates of a country’s performance relative to its level of GDP per capita.
The results for each area are combined into an overall ranking using weights of 40 per cent for Resources and 20 per cent for each of the other three modules. The top five countries in the overall ranking are, in rank order, the United States, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Denmark and Sweden.
Full details of the methodology and results can be found in the report which can be downloaded below. The data from this year is also included within the rankings comparison table.