This report presents results for the 2016 Universitas 21 annual ranking of national systems of higher education and explains the methodology used to obtain the results. Our national ranking complements the plethora of rankings of institutions. The rationale for national rankings is that it is the higher education system as a whole, not only of research intensive universities, that matters for the economic and cultural development of a nation. Different institutions will contribute in different ways to achieving overall national objectives. The top five countries in the overall ranking are, in order, the United States, Switzerland, Denmark, the United Kingdom and Sweden. The largest improvement over the 2015 rankings is shown by China.
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. These adjusted estimates, based on deviations after regressing each series on GDP per capita, complement our main measures of performance.
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.