The UB is the only Spanish university to appear on the list of the world’s 200 best universities published by the specialist British newspaper, The Times Higher Education Supplement. The list, headed for the second year running by the University of Harvard (USA), ranks the UB at number 190, a climb of 50 places on its position last year. The UB together with La Sapienza in Rome (197) are the only two universities in southern Europe to appear in the league table. Likewise, the UB and the UNAM (ranked at number 74), described as «probably the biggest university in the world in terms of student numbers», are the only two universities from the Spanish-speaking world to be included. The 200 universities include institutions from some thirty different countries.

The study takes into account a range of variables: the number of foreign students and internationally renowned academics, the amount of cited research, the student-teacher ratio, as well as the results of the peer review conducted among more than 3,700 university lecturers around the world by The Times Higher, and the opinion of employers, both those that operate internationally and those that have stronger links to local markets.

This third edition of The Times Higher World University Rankings reveals how the universities that lead the rankings have maintained their positions, although there have been a considerable number of changes both at the top and bottom of the table. The University of Harvard for example keeps top position, while Imperial College London enters the top ten for the first time. The University of Cambridge takes second place while Yale enters the top five for the first time. American and UK universities occupy the first ten places, but the first thirty places include universities from China, Australia, France, Singapore, Japan, Canada and Switzerland.

The ranking of the top 50 European universities includes a large number of British universities, with the top four being English (Cambridge, Oxford, Imperial College London and the London School of Economics) while the fifth is the École Normale Supérieure in Paris.

Similarly, this year’s ranking heralds the arrival of universities from Asia, Australia and Latin-American for the first time. Japan, the world’s second largest economy, sees eleven of its universities represented, and, although the University of Tokyo is considered excellent, the authors of the study consider it «not very international».

The study highlights a number of interesting points, including the fact the EU spends around 1.1% of its GDP on higher education (similar in this respect to Japan), while the US spends 2.6%, and that, unlike other countries, the USA has no department of higher education which decides upon and implements government policy.