The 2011 edition of the Times Higher Education (THE), one of the most prestigious and influential university rankings in the world, has just been published. The results put Pompeu Fabra University in 186th position world-wide, and 77th in Europe. This means that UPF is the only university in the Spanish State that has managed to get in among the world's 200 best universities.  

Globally, the THE 2011 ranking is clearly Anglo-Saxon dominated. The classification is led by four north American and one British university.

There are twenty-nine European institutions in the top 100 and the remainder are from North America and Asia. Top of the list is the California Institute of Technology, followed by Harvard University, Stanford University, the University of Oxford and Princeton University.

The THE ranking indicates the absolute position of the 200 best universities and the brackets in which the rest are situated to include the world's 400 best universities, among which there are eight Spanish universities.

Three Catalan universities in the top one hundred European universities

Of the eight best situated Spanish universities, three are Catalan: the University of Barcelona (UB) and the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB) in the [201-225] bracket, and the Polytechnic University of Catalonia (UPC) in the [351-400] bracket.

In the rest of the State, the highest scoring university is the Autonomous University of Madrid (UAM) in the [276-300] bracket, followed by the Universities of Zaragoza (UNIZAR) and of Valencia (UV) both in the [351-400] bracket.

On a European scale the best positioned centre is the University of Oxford, in fourth place, closely followed by the University of Cambridge, in sixth place. In 77th place, UPF is the first Spanish university in the European ranking , and the prevalence of Catalan institutions within the Spanish university system is confirmed since UPF, UB and UAB are among the top 100 European universities.

UPF noted for its scientific production and internationalization

The method of analysis used in the THE includes thirteen indicators regarding five main categories: teaching (30%), research (30%), impact of published papers (30 %) -number of citations-, internationalization -of both students and lecturers- (7,5 %), and knowledge transfer and innovation (2,5%), each of which -as indicated numerically- has a specific weight when making the overall calculation.

As in the previous edition (2010), one of the categories with the greatest weighting was precisely the category for which UPF is most noted. It is the one that takes into account the influence of the papers published in impact journals, whose score has increased (from 84.7 to 87.6), a reflection of the quality of the papers written that become papers of reference for the rest of the scientific community.  

The next best score was obtained for student and lecturer internationalization. The score of this indicator has also increased in comparison with the previous ranking (from 44.1 to 54.3). The scores obtained for the remaining categories are as follow: knowledge transfer and innovation (37.6), teaching (23.4) and research (16.1); all in all, UPF scores 43.1.

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