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The 2013 ranking of the world top 100 universities remains quite stable. The US dominate with 52 universities, one less than in 2012. The United Kingdom, number 2, comes far behind with 9 universities. The world best-in-class universities are dominantly located in the North American and European regions, the exceptions being Israel, Australia and Japan.
The hierarchy is reversed when considering the number of institutions per capita (in this case, per million population, times 100). Now, the smaller countries put forward a humbling performance. The top slots are taken by Switzerland, Israel, Denmark, and Sweden, in this order.
Switzerland achieves a per capita index of 52.3, that is 3 times the median and 2.7 times the average. The giant US occupy a modest 9th rank out of 16, with a score marginally below the median and the average (16.1 against the median 17.1 and the average 19.1 — the red line in the chart). The picture is even less kind to the likes of France, Germany, Japan and Russia that fill the lowest slots of the list, with comparatively low scores, well below the median and the average.
100 World Top Ranked Universities per Capita | |||
Nation |
Number of 100 Top Ranked Universities |
Population |
Per Capita Index |
| Australia | 5 | 22.0 | 22.7 |
| Belgium | 1 | 10.6 | 9.5 |
| Canada | 4 | 34.6 | 11.6 |
| Denmark | 2 | 5.5 | 36.4 |
| Finland | 1 | 5.4 | 18.7 |
| France | 4 | 63.3 | 6.3 |
| Germany | 4 | 82.1 | 4.9 |
| Israel | 3 | 7.6 | 39.5 |
| Japan | 3 | 127.2 | 2.4 |
| Netherlands | 3 | 16.6 | 18.1 |
| Norway | 1 | 4.9 | 20.5 |
| Russia | 1 | 138.0 | 0.7 |
| Sweden | 3 | 9.4 | 32.1 |
| Switzerland | 4 | 7.6 | 52.3 |
| United Kingdom | 9 | 62.3 | 14.5 |
| United States | 52 | 323.4 | 16.1 |
| Median | 3.0 | 17.1 | |
| Average | 6.3 | 19.1 | |
| Standard deviation | 12.0 | 14.1 | |
Sources: Institute of Higher Education, Shanghai and UN Population Division.
