Europe is falling in the latest ranking of the world’s best universities, while Scandinavia is going against the trend. Just like previous years, the U.S. dominates in the rankings by British Times Higher Education: Seven of the universities on this year’s top ten list are American, with Caltech (California Institute of Technology) at number one, and a shared second place for American Harvard and British Oxford.
”Scandinavia’s leading universities go against the worrisome declining trend in Europe,” says Phil Baty at Times Higher Education in a press release. Of the Swedish universities, the Karolinska Institute climbs highest from number 42 to 36. Stockholm University and KTH (the Royal Institute of Technology) are also climbing up, while Uppsala and Lund universities drop in this year’s survey.
”Sweden has five universities on the top 200 list, Denmark has three, and Finland and Norway have one each. Scandinavia’s strong system for financing unviersities with public funds has obviously been good for the countries in the global competition,” says Baty.
The ranking is done from 13 different indicators, which together give a broad view of the universities. Measured—among other things—are research, education and internationalization.
For more information: World University Rankings 2013-2014
Sweden has five universities among the top 200 in the world. They are:
36 The Karolinska Institute
103 Stockholm University
111 Uppsala University
117 The Royal Institute of Technology
123 Lund University
In Denmark:
117 Technical University of Denmark
138 Aarhus University
150 University of Copenhagen
In Finland:
100 University of Helsinki
In Norway:
185 University of Oslo
And Sweden also has a few making it onto the list of best 400 in the world:
201 Göteborg University
276 Chalmers University of Technology
251 Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
301 Linköping University
301 Umeå University

Allow us to stress how beauty is always in the eye of the beholder, and only a couple years ago this editor's alma mater, Lund University—http://tinyurl.com/7llvbxh—was at the top in Sweden (where it rightfully should be no doubt)!