And the best Belgian universities are...
According to the last rankings by the Times Higher World University Rankings 2019, Belgium is home to three of the top 200 universities in the world: KU Leuven, the Catholic University of Louvain (UCL) and Ghent University are indeed included in this ranking, which places Oxford University at the forefront for the second consecutive year.
The rankings of the prominent British magazine Times Higher Education are based on various parameters such as quality of teaching and research, scientific citations and international attractiveness. Thus, nearly 1,250 establishments located in 86 countries were included.
Though four Belgian universities appeared in the 2018 rankings, the fourth being the Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB), only three remain in the latest publication: KU Leuven, the first Belgian university, occupying 48th place, a step backwards by one place compared with last year. UCL moved up a slot to 128th place, a slot shared in a tie with Maastricht University. Ghent University fell from 107th to 143rd place.
Leading the rankings are universities from the United Kingdom and United States, which dominate the top 10. In the lead is Oxford University, overtaking that of Cambridge. Following those are Stanford University followed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the California Institute of Technology. Also worth noting, amongst others, is the ascent of Chinese universities, which is a sign of increased competition in the face of what the Times Higher Education considers to be a certain stagnation of Western universities.
Top 10 Rankings:
- Oxford University (GB)
- University of Cambridge (GB)
- Stanford University (USA)
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology (USA)
- California Institute of Technology (USA)
- Harvard University (USA)
- Princeton University (USA)
- Yale University (USA)
- Imperial College London (GB)
- University of Chicago (USA)