According to the Times Higher Education (THE) Ranking, a deterioration in an establishment’s position is due mainly to three factors: the reputation of its teaching, the productivity of its researchers, and the frequency of citation of academic papers.

The THE Ranking itself says that the deterioration in UZH’s position is primarily due to its performance in a survey of teaching. With no access to the survey data or precise details of the evaluation, UZH cannot verify this indicator.

According to the THE Ranking, there has been a massive deterioration in the productivity of researchers at UZH, with the University managing only around half the number of points it earned for this metric last year.

The indicator is based on an analysis conducted over a period of five years, which shifts one year forward for each ranking. Against this backdrop, the strong decline in publication activity is hard to understand without further analysis. Especially since other rankings measured in terms of the number of researchers show an increase in the number of publications from UZH.

While the decline in UZH’s citation rate since last year is only minimal (0.5 out of 100 points). Since the universities are very close together in that field, this has had a major impact on its ranking, which has fallen from 101 to 133.

The THE Rankings 2018

The rankings methodology 2018