Nearly three-quarters of universities in the UK and the US have dropped rankings in the Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) World University Rankings 2021 making it the worst-ever performance of Britain. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) topped the global ranking of QS University ranking for the 9th time in a row becoming the only university to manage such a long run in the list. 

However, the overall performance of the United States saw a fall from 32 to 27 in the top-100 list over five years. In the top five universities, universities from the United States dominate the list with only Oxford university, which marked its worst-ever performance, making it to the fifth place slipping one point down. 

Imperial College London climbed one spot from nine to eight, becoming the only university in the United Kingdom in the top 20 list to improve. The decrease in rankings in the UK have been attributed due to poor teaching and declining research impact in the universities. 

Ben Sowter, director of research at QS, said the changes are reflecting ‘the increasing competitiveness of the global higher education landscape.’ He said the reason for the fall of UK’s universities mirror those in North American and European countries as a result of increasing investment for higher education. 

Twenty-six 26 spots among the top 100 list have been taken this time by Asian Universities including institutions from China, South Korea, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, Malaysia and Taiwan. This year’s ranking also had five Australian universities in top-50, whereas the US had 17 and UK eight. 

The World University Ranking of top 1,000 universities are released every year by the Higher education consultancy QS. This year’s ranking features 1,029 universities from over 60 countries.

The institutions are ranked on the basis of six indicators which include academic, reputation, employer reputation, faculty/student ratio, citations per faculty, international faculty ratio and international student ratio. Students use these rankings to explore the higher education options worldwide and to compare key aspects of schools’ research missions.