The World Reputation Rankings 2015: 100 most prestigious universities in the world to be announced

The Times Higher Education World Reputation Rankings 2015 will be published on 11 March.

The fifth annual list of the world’s 100 most prestigious universities, as judged by 10,000 senior academics from across the world, will go live online at 21.00 GMT on Wednesday 11 March 2015 and will be published as part of a special supplement with Times Higher Education magazine on Thursday 12 March.

The ranking will be based on the most balanced and comprehensive global academic reputation survey ever produced.

The invitation-only survey, which was distributed in partnership with Elsevier, was issued in 15 languages (up from nine last year) and was closed in January 2015. It attracted a total of 10,507 responses from 141 countries. Respondents are all senior, published scholars, and reported an average of more than 15 years working in higher education and research.

“The reputation rankings have become a closely watched annual global index of university prestige,” said Phil Baty, editor of the Times Higher Education World University Rankings. “The top 100 list is based purely on subjective opinion, but it is the informed opinion of leading thinkers across the world – those who are best placed to understand quality teaching and research across our universities.

“The rankings are both an indicator of global prestige and a predictor of future global prestige – because a top global reputation has real-world effects, helping institutions to attract the best global talent, to forge strong international partnerships and to attract investment.

“So we are particularly proud that the research underpinning the rankings this year is the most thorough and comprehensive to date.”

The survey is carefully controlled to ensure that respondents are statistically representative of both their country and their academic field. Unlike similar surveys, no volunteering is allowed and there is no sign-up facility.

The most respondents, 20 per cent, came from engineering and technology fields, followed by social sciences (19 per cent) and physical sciences (17 per cent). Life sciences are represented by 15 per cent of the sample, and health and related subjects are represented by 13 per cent.

The survey was particularly successful in attracting responses from the arts and humanities, which make up 16 per cent of all responses.

United Nations data was used to ensure that the distribution of the survey closely reflected the true demographics of global scholarship. The highest proportion of respondents (15.8 per cent) came from the US, followed by 10.6 per cent from China and 7.2 per cent from Japan. The UK was the next best represented, with 5.6 per cent of the responses, followed by Germany, with 4.8 per cent. Overall, 141 countries were represented.

The survey data will form the basis of the THE World Reputation Rankings 2015 in March, and will also make up two of the 13 largely objective indicators used to create the THE World University Rankings 2015-2016, which will be published on 1 October 2015 at the THE World Academic Summit at the University of Melbourne.

Please note: the 2015 survey, carried out in partnership with Elsevier, is now closed. THEwill not be collecting any more reputation-based data until the 2016 Academic Reputation Survey, which will open in late 2015.

View the results of the THE World Reputation Rankings 2014