Swiss no longer in top ten in world university ranking

ETH Zurich came in at 7th and 19th place in the QS and Shanghai rankings respectively this year. © KEYSTONE / WALTER BIERI

The Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH Zurich) remains the best university in continental Europe, despite slipping one place to 11^th in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2019. 

The listExternal link, which was released on Wednesday, scores 1,250 universities on five main criteria: teaching, research, citations, industry income and international outlook. Over 20,000 responses to a survey from 2017 and 2018 on reputation of the universities also influenced the ranking. 

The British universities of Oxford and Cambridge continued to occupy the first and second places, respectively, ahead of Stanford University (3^rd), the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) (4^th) and the California Institute of Technology (5^th). 

Among the Swiss universities, the Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL) moved up three places to 35^th place and the University of Zurich rose from 136th place to 90^th. Meanwhile, the University of Basel slipped from 95^th to 103^rd and the University of Bern moved from 105^th to 110^th, while the University of Geneva went from 130^th to 135^th.