The University of Zurich has been ranked 73rd in the 2021 Times Higher Education ranking, which ranks more than 1,500 universities. The ranking is based on a survey of highly respected academics who, on invitation by THE, are asked to identify the world’s best universities. ETH Zurich and EPFL Lausanne came in first and second among universities in Switzerland, while the University of Zurich is third ahead of the universities of Basel, Bern and Geneva.

Reasons for the changes

For this year’s THE ranking, UZH entered more detailed information about the full-time equivalents for the number of academic staff, which meant fewer full-time positions were counted. This lower number has an effect on most of the metric evaluations.

The performance indicators of the annual THE ranking are grouped into five areas: Teaching (the learning environment), research (volume, income and reputation), citations (research influence), international outlook (staff, students and research) and industry income (knowledge transfer).

UZH was able to make clear gains in all areas.

UZH positions in the THE ranking categories, 2017 to 2020

Das THE-Ranking 2021