For the third year in a row, seven Dutch universities have managed to nab a spot in the top 100 of the Times Higher Education (THE) university rankings, with Wageningen University & Research once again claiming the top spot. 

Times Higher Education University Rankings

As students around the world start the new academic year, THE once again publishes its annual rankings for universities and higher education institutions around the world. This year saw more than 16.000 universities across 99 countries assessed according to 13 performance indicators over five key areas:

• Teaching
• Research
• Citations
• Industry income
• International outlook

Each university featured in the ranking is awarded a score out of 100 for each of the five areas, before receiving an overall score out of 100.

As is typically the case with international university rankings, British and American schools dominated the top 25 places, but mainland Europe was represented by ETH Zurich in Switzerland, which took the 15th spot. For the sixth year in a row, the University of Oxford has been named the number one university in the world, while China has two institutions in the top 20 for the first time (Peking University and Tsinghua University):

• 1. University of Oxford (95,6)
• = 2. California Institute of Technology (95,0)
• = 2. Harvard University (95)
• 4. Stanford University (94,9)
• = 5. University of Cambridge (94,6)
• = 5. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (94,6)
• 7. Princeton University (93,6)
• 8. University of California, Berkley (92,2)
• 9. Yale University (90,8)
• 10. The University of Chicago (89,8)

The best Dutch universities 2022

With an overall score of 70,1 out of 100, Wageningen University & Research has once again managed to hold onto the top spot, which it stole from the Delft University of Technology in the 2020 rankings. Wageningen now occupies 53rd place, moving up almost 10 places compared to last year, and performed particularly well in the citations, industry income, and international outlook categories (95,6, 100, and 86,4 respectively).

A couple of other universities in the Netherlands have managed to climb up the table. Utrecht University has moved from 75th to 69th place, while Delft has climbed from 78th to 75th. Not all were as lucky, however, as Leiden University and Maastricht University both dropped a couple of places, and Eindhoven University of Technology slipped out of the top 200. 

All Dutch universities ranked as top 250 in the world

This year, 10 universities secured spots in the top 200, but all 13 of the major universities in the Netherlands will be pleased with placing in the top 250 universities in the world:

• 53. Wageningen University & Research (70,1)
• 65. University of Amsterdam (68,9)
• 69. Utrecht University (97,6)
• 71. Leiden University (67,1)
• 72. Erasmus University Rotterdam (67)
• = 75. Delft University of Technology
• = 80. University of Groningen
• 115. VU Amsterdam (60,9)
• = 127. Maastricht University (59,2)
• = 132. Radboud University Nijmegen (58,6)
• 201 - 250. Eindhoven University of Technology (50,4 - 53,9)
• 201 - 250. Tilburg University (50,4 - 53,9)
• 201 - 250. University of Twente (50,4 - 53,9)

For more information about THE 2022 and to see the complete ranking, visit the THE website.