Two Norwegian universities fall, while two climb on international rankings
University ranking
The University of Oslo climbs almost into the top hundred. UiT falls for the fifth year in a row.
Brussels (Khrono): How many Norwegians are among the 1418 best universities in the world? Four, whether we should rely on the nineteenth edition of the QS World University Ranking, one of the more well-known in the myriad of university rankings.
The order among the four Norwegians is the same as in previous years, but all of them have changed places since last year’s list.
Up and down for the Norwegians
The University of Oslo is at the top among Norwegians. The capital’s oldest university is now number 101, one place up from last year. This is the fifth year in a row UiO climbs on this ranking, but they are still a bit behind the top position from 2014, when they were in 89th place, this is the only year that has been ranked among the top 100.
The University of Bergen is falling for the third year in a row, from place 199 last year to place 207. This is the lowest they have been ranked since in 2012 they were ranked number 145.
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NTNU has been relatively stable on the list in recent years, after falling from over one hundred locations from 2018 to 2019. In 2015, the university was ranked 246th. In the recent ranking, they climb from 369th to 352nd.
UiT Norway’s Arctic University was ranked number 304 in 2012, now they are in place 440 after falling for the fifth year in a row. This is the lowest they have been ranked.
Several Danish, Swedish and Finnish
So how do Norwegians do it compared to universities in other Nordic countries?
Sweden has eight universities on the list, two of them are in the top 100, the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm in 89th place and Lund University in 95th place.
There are five Danish universities on the list, the University of Copenhagen is the only one among the top hundred, the university is the highest ranked among the Nordic countries, in 82nd place.
There are nine Finnish universities on the list, at the top of which is the University of Helsinki in 106th place.
British and American dominate the top
The top of the list is dominated by British and American universities. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the United States is at the top for eleven years in a row. This year’s list is followed by the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom and Stanford University in the United States.
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The only university among the top that is not British or American is ETH Zurich in Switzerland.
201 universities on the list are in the US – more than in any other country – but of these, 103 are falling, while 29 are climbing and 25 are newcomers. Also a majority of the British – 48 out of 90 – are falling.
After the United States and the United Kingdom, China has the most institutions on the list. Two of the 71 Chinese universities on the list are ranked among the top 15.
Come into the spotlight for study
The QS ranking is, as I said, one of the most famous in the world. Senior researcher Igor Chirikov at the Center for Studies in Higher Education, University of California, Berkeley, is looking at the ranking in a study published last year.
I studied seeing Chirikov on conflict of interest among those who rank universities. He concludes that universities that have purchased various services from have improved their places more than those that have not.
Overall, the findings suggest that conflicts of interest may have a significant impact on global university rankings, wrote Igor Chirikov in a comment to Khrono.
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A spokesman for the QS blacks in a comment to Khrono that they are “confident of robustness in our approach when producing one of the world’s most popular rankings for higher education”.