Survey Study: European Universities Rankings

© 2012 by Theocharis Vagelis

I was recently asked by the Board of Directors of a British University that has – among other countries - franchise operations in Greece, to conduct a survey study concerning the best Top 100 Universities in Europe. The reason of course was obvious; the Board wanted to see the University’s ranking, in a study designed and implemented by a Private Consulting Consortium, despite the existing published ranking tables by the usual suspects (European Commission, Forbes, NY Times, RatER, etc). The Consortium was made up of Academics and Professionals from 4 European Countries. I played the role of the Senior Project Manager. The survey was based upon certain criteria. Indicatively, the criteria were the following:
• Academic Performance
• Research Activity
• Research Performance and Impact
• Number of Articles published in prestigious journals
• Number of Awards
• Number of Professors with PhDs
• Faculty Expertise
• International Activities
• Resource Availability
• Popularity of website, and many, many more.
It must be noted that there is no internationally recognized set of standards and quality criteria. That is why there are considerable ranking differences among published ranking lists.

1. University of Cambridge

2. University of Oxford

3. Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich

4. The University of Edinburgh

5. University College London

6. Universität Wien

7. Technische Universität Berlin

8. Freie Universität Berlin

9. Universidad de Granada

10. Universitetet i Oslo

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