12 Dutch Universities in the World's Top-500 Universities

An assessment carried out by found that Dutch(0.8)) and (Israel) (0.8). The Netherlands comes into the
universities do very well in the World's Top-500next group of countries with 0.7 universities per million
universities. is an independent, global and interactiveinhabitants (this group includes Denmark, Australia,
website where visitors can obtain information aboutHong Kong and the UK). The number of US
universities (global rankings, student reviews, universityuniversities per million inhabitants is 0.5.
news and campus pictures).Comparison with the World's Top-100universities
The analysis is based on a ranking of the World’sUniversities in the US clearly dominate the World’s
Top-500 Universities produced by the Institute ofTop-100 universities, with 58 universities. There are 23
Higher Education at the Shanghai Jiao Tong University.European universities, of which two are Dutch (the
Several indicators of academic or researchUniversities of Utrecht and Leiden).
performance are used to establish the ranking, theseAge
include staff winning Nobel Prizes, highly citedThe median age of the 12 Dutch universities is 112
researchers and articles indexed in major citationyears, ranging from 32 years (University of Maastricht)
indices.to 433 (University of Leiden). Many of the Dutch
There are 12 Dutch universities in the World's Top-500universities are young, with six of the 12 universities
universities (2008): University of Utrecht (ranked 47th),aged less than 100 years.
University of Leiden (76th), Free University ofEndowmentsEndowments can play an important role
Amsterdam (101-151), Amsterdam University (101-151),in the operating budget of universities, as demonstrated
University of Groningen (101-151), Delft University ofby the assessment of the world's Top-25 universities.
Technology (152-200), Erasmus University (152-200),Only one of the 12 Dutch universities reported an
Radboud University Nijmegen (152-200), University ofendowment on Wikipedia [accessed 22 November
Wageningen (152-200), University of Maastricht2008] and this was the Delft University of Technology
(303-401), Twente University (303-401) and Eindhoven(€460 million in 2007). This is a relatively small
University of Technology (402-503).amount in comparison to the World’s Top-25
Comparison with the World's Top-500 Overall,theuniversities whose median endowment is $5.9 billion.
World’s Top-500 universities are mainly located inConclusionsThe overall performance of Dutch
Europe (n=210; 40%), the Americas (n=190; 40%) anduniversities compared to the rest of the world is very
the Asian/Pacific region (n=100; 20%). The Netherlands,good. Despite not being represented in the World's
with 12 universities, represents 2% of the totalTop-25 universities, they have a very good overall
universities in the World's Top-500 universities. If oneperformance with a high number of universities per
adjusts for population size (i.e. one calculates themillion inhabitants in the World´s Top-500. Another
number of universities in the Top-500 per 1 millionpositive point is that many of the Dutch universities are
inhabitants in the country), the Netherlands performsyoung and have progressed to the World's Top-500
very well compared to other industrialised countries.universities over a relatively short time period. The
The countries with the highest number of universitiesstrong overall performance of Dutch universities is
per million inhabitants are the smaller countries inprobably associated with factors like the good
Western Europe (Sweden (1.2 universities in themanagement practices, the high level of public (and
World's Top-500 Universities per 1 million inhabitants),private) funding available to Dutch universities and the
Finland (1.2), Switzerland (1.0), Austria (0.9), Norwaylong academic tradition that exists in the Netherlands.