The 2014 ranking of the world top 100 universities remains quite stable. The United States have a domineering presence with 52 universities, the same number as in 2013. The United Kingdom, number 2, comes far behind with 8 universities. Number three is the surpising Switzerland with 5 universities in the top 100 pot. 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 instance, per million population, times 100). Now, the smaller countries put forward a humbling performance. The top slots are taken by Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden, Israel and the Netherlands, in this order.

Switzerland achieves a per capita index of 61.3, that is 3.5 times the median and 3.2 times the average. The giant US occupy a modest 109th rank out of 16, with a score marginally below the median and the average (16.1 against the median 17.4, and the average 19 — red horizontal 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.

Sources: Institute of Higher Education, Shanghai and UN Population Division.

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