Sixth place for the Netherlands in U21 ranking
Dutch higher education is scoring well and has made it to the sixth spot in the Universitas 21 ranking. This is stated in the report ‘U21 Ranking of National Higher Education Systems’ of Universitas 21. With this, the Netherlands climb two spots compared to the eighth place in 2017. The top five consists of the United States, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Sweden and Denmark.
The ranking is determined by 25 performance criteria grouped into four modules: resources, environment, international connections and research output and impact. In the first category, the Netherlands climbed from the 13th to the 11th spot. In the second category the Netherlands remained ninth. In the area of connectivity, the Netherlands climbed one spot to fourth place. Finally, the Netherlands again took eighth position in output this year.
Context
The U21 ranking looks at higher education as a whole and comprises 50 countries. The first U21 ranking was published in 2012. Since 2014, U21 also publishes a second ranking, adjusted to the GDP. The U21 ranking assesses on the basis of the abovementioned four modules. The score of each module makes up 20 per cent of the total score, except for output, which makes up 40 per cent.