U21 Ranking of National Higher Education Systems 2017

The Universitas 21 Ranking is the only one in the world to assess national higher education systems, and meets a long-standing need to shift discussion from the ranking of the world’s best universities, to the best overall systems in each country. U21 developed the Rankings as a benchmark for governments, education institutions and individuals, and the project aims to highlight the importance of creating a strong environment for higher education institutions to contribute to economic and cultural development, provide a high-quality experience for students, and help institutions compete for overseas applicants.

The first Ranking report was published in May 2012 and this is the fourth year of reporting. The 2017 report includes the same 50 countries as in the 2016 report, which have again been ranked separately in four areas (Resources, Environment, Connectivity and Output) and overall. The 2017 ranking incorporates a new measure of the diversity of institutions. It now comprises two equally-weighted components. The new measure recognizes more fully that a good system of higher education provides a range of institutions to meet differing student and national needs. The first component measures the mix of public and private institutions.

The research authors, based at the Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, University of Melbourne, looked at 25 measures across these four areas, allowing them to create a very detailed picture of the higher education system in each country.

2017 Overall Results Summary

The main ranking compares a country’s performance against the best in the world on each measure. Overall, the top 10 countries in rank order are:

The United States, Switzerland, United Kingdom, Denmark, Sweden, Singapore, Canada, Netherlands, Finland and Australia. This list contains the same countries as in the 2016 Ranking, but the order has changed a little.

2017 Adjusted Overall Results Summary

In this auxiliary ranking, introduced in 2014, countries are scored on how they perform on each of the 25 measures relative to countries at similar stages of economic development as measured by GDP per capita. Using this approach, the top 10 countries using the adjusted data are, in rank order:

Serbia, the United Kingdom, South Africa, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, New Zealand, Portugal, Israel and Australia.

Report: universitas21.com