For the third year in a row, the United States has been named “top country for higher education” by the U21 Ranking of National Higher Education Systems.
Sweden has maintained its second place, while Canada and Denmark rose to take joint third from their respective forth and fifth place positions in 2013. Finland rounds out the top five.
Switzerland fell from third to sixth followed by the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Australia and Singapore.
This year the organisation also included a second list of GDP adjusted rankings which compares national systems at similar economic stages of development
The largest changes in rankings since last year are an improvement of eight places by China (29th), a rise of five places for Hungary (35th) , and a fall of seven places for Ukraine (42nd).
The rankings of 50 national systems are calculated by Universitas 21, a global network of research universities, based on 24 measurements in four areas: resources, environment, connectivity and output.
This year the organisation also included a second list of GDP adjusted rankings which compares national systems at similar economic stages of development (using purchasing power parity exchange rates from 2011).
The result shows a marked change from the original ranking with Sweden topping the list followed by Finland and Denmark. Meanwhile, Serbia (4th), South Africa (17th) and China (9th) all rise by over 25 places while higher income countries including the US (6th), Norway (27th) and Singapore (31st) fall markedly.
The adjusted rankings also reveal several lower income countries show significant improvements in the individual “Connectivity” rankings which attempt to measure the quality of teaching and research as well as the transfer of ideas between industry and institution- “an activity that is likely to be most beneficial to economic growth” says Universitas 21.
The organisation included adjusted rankings to level out the playing field for comparison and “meet criticism that rankings use criteria that are most appropriate for developed countries.”
“The other side to looking at how income levels influence the performance of higher education, is how tertiary education systems best contribute to GDP growth,” it said.
“Our work provides results which enable this issue to be explored at a more disaggregated level than usual.”
