Good news! This is the type of news that makes me proud to live here and participate in NL society.

By Bill | August 15, 2011 2:41 PM

This is good to hear. However it is not THE list, but one of the two major ones. I have not looked at the Times, but I guess Utrecht does well there too. All Dutch universities are highly ranked.
It would also be nice to read, though, that NL is leading in the creation of a new ranking that should address the many methodological issues of the 2 famous ones. that is also a good contribution from NL

By Leon | August 15, 2011 6:11 PM

I don't know where they got the figure but I just checked that Utrecht university is ranked 143th.

By david | August 16, 2011 2:05 PM

The world first University is Cambridge University UK. 2nd is Harvard, then Yale, then London. Utrecht is not in the top it is in fact 83rd and Leiden is 82nd Holland universities are not high up at all in the world rankings, in fact Amsterdam is top in Dutch Unis at 56 according to the IELTS if anyone needs more info on this let me know and I will post up details. UK are in the top 10 with USA with 4 in the top 10, Germany is also lagging behind.

By PhysicsMan | August 16, 2011 4:48 PM

@david: they got the figure from the 2011 shanghai ranking, known as the Academic Ranking of World Universities. Together with the Times Higher Education ranking it is the most renowned in the world.

By Leon | August 16, 2011 5:23 PM

@PhysicsMan:What you say is purely contextual. I repeat UU was 48th in the ARWU, and was 143th in the THE. I often criticize the Netherlands, but I cannot understand why you are trying to deny these facts. The ARWU, as criticized as it is, is the leading ranking of World universities. Fact. If you wish, we can go into the whole argument about the indicator, but that is another story. This article says that UU is 48th in the latest ranking of world universities - it takes ARWU as the key ranking, and that is reasonable. and that is true. Google ARWU 2011

By Leon | August 17, 2011 5:06 PM

This ranking HAD to be made in China.

By Peter Holst | August 17, 2011 7:09 PM

@Leon:

Calm down Mr. Dutchy.

I trust ARWU as much as other chinese made good and products.

By david | August 18, 2011 10:16 PM

"A 2007 paper published in the journal Scientometrics found that the results from the Shanghai rankings (ARWU) could not be reproduced from raw data using the method described by its originators.

In a report from April 2009, J-C. Billaut, D. Bouyssou and Ph. Vincke analyze how the ARWU works, using their insights as specialists of Multiple Criteria Decision Making (MCDM). Their main conclusions are that the criteria used are not relevant; that the aggregation methodology has a number of major problems; and that insufficient attention has been paid to fundamental choices of criteria."

I got it from Wikipedia.

By Al-Muslim | August 18, 2011 10:22 PM

David: mr Dutchy to me? that is funny indeed... and I am also perfectly calm since the position of UU on ARWU or THE does not concern me personally anyhow and it is publicly available online. You don't need to trust the ARWU, nor the THE or other rankings. The fact that it is Chinese does not disqualify it per se. However, it is the most known and the first ever and so it is quite normal that it is used. If that makes you so angry I frankly do not understand it. There are enough things we can agree are wrong with Holland. If this sounds "angry" to you then you are too sensitive.

By leon | August 19, 2011 5:51 PM

@Al-Muslim: that is true and what does not seem clear from this debate is that I am not defending ARWU's methodology. All I say is that it is the most used, all over the world; policies are made based on it, the EU is interested in it etc. some universities have a "ranking officer" to improve their ranks. I know the indicators are all screwed, that is the key problem, but these rankings will not go away soon, so it is (for once) good news that UU is high in it.

By Leon | August 19, 2011 5:55 PM