The Top-10 Universities in the United Kingdom

An assessment carried out by found that ScotlandThe UK universities are located in following regions:
has the highest density of the World's Top-500England (34), Scotland (5), Wales (2) and Northern
universities in the United Kingdom. is an independent,Ireland (1). An interesting difference is that universities in
global and interactive website where visitors canScotland are much older than in the other three
obtain information about universities (global rankings,regions: the median age of the Scottish universities is
student reviews, university news and campus pictures).513 years (range 127-598) compared to 101 years
The Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU)(range 39-912) in England and 107 years (range 88-125)
is produced by the Institute of Higher Education at thein Wales.
Shanghai Jiao Tong University . Several indicators ofIn order to make a comparison with other industrialized
academic or research performance are used tocountries, calculates the number of universities in the
establish the ranking, these include highly citedWorld’s Top-500 (2008) per one million inhabitants.
researchers, articles indexed in major citation indicesThe overall number of universities per million inhabitants
and staff winning Nobel Prizes.in industrialised countries is 0.5. An earlier assessment
The World’s Top-500 universities (2008) are mainlyfound that small countries in Western Europe (Sweden
located in Europe (n=210; 40%), the Americas (n=190;(1.2), Finland (1.1) and Switzerland (1.0)) and New
40%) and the Asian/Pacific region (n=100; 20%). ThereZealand (1.2) have the highest number of universities
are 42 (8%) universities located in the United Kingdomper million inhabitants.
(UK), representing 20% of the universities in Europe.The number of universities in the World’s Top-500
The top-10 universities in the UK are: University ofuniversities that are located in the UK is 0.7 per million
Cambridge (ranked 4th in the world), the University ofinhabitants, which compares favourably with other
Oxford (10th), University College London (22nd), Imperiallarge industrialized countries: Canada (0.6), Germany
College London (27th), The University of Manchester(0.5), United States (0.5), France (0.4), Italy (0.4) and
(40th), University of Edinburgh (55th), University ofJapan (0.2). For the four regions of the United Kingdom,
Bristol (61st), University of Sheffield (77th), King’sthe numbers are as follows: Scotland (1.0), England
College London (81st) and University of Nottingham(0.7), Wales (0.7) and Northern Ireland (0.6).
(82nd).Conclusions
The UK has the highest number of universities in theWithin the UK, Scotland has a much higher density of
World’s Top-500 universities (42) compared to thetop universities compared to England, Wales and
other European countries: Germany (40), France (23),Northern Ireland. Scotland also performs very well
Italy (22), the Netherlands (12), Sweden (11) and Spaincompared to other industrialised countries and the
(9). In the ranking of Europe's Top-10 universities, fivenumber of Scottish universities per million inhabitants is
are located in the UK and in the Top-25 universities, 9one of the highest in the world.
are located in the United Kingdom.