QS (Quacquarelli Symonds), one of the world’s leading specialists in higher education, ranked ETH Zurich seventh in its 2019 World University Ranking released earlier today. The ranking positions ETH Zurich in the top 1% alongside some of the world’s most prestigious institutions including: MIT – Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Caltech, and Oxford University.

Today’s announcement represents the highest ranking that ETH has achieved, thus far, in the highly competitive modern league tables. QS evaluated more than 4,700 institutions from 151 countries, including nine Swiss universities. Measured against top Ivy League and other private universities, ETH is one of the few publically funded institutions in the top ten and retains its leading position as the top-ranked university in continental Europe.

Community support, cooperation, and respect

ETH Zurich president, Lino Guzzella, delighted with the ranking said, “The ranking reflects a great team effort from the entire ETH community. A community that dedicates their talents to outstanding teaching and research supported by a highly motivated administrative and technical staff. As a public university, for ETH such a result also reflects the support and commitment of the Swiss society.” The ETH community consists of more than 20,600 students from over 120 countries, 530 professors, and 9,400 staff members. Since subjective Academic and Employer Reputation surveys determine a combined weight of 50% in the QS ranking, maintaining community support is a key success factor. Over the past 4 years, ETH has maintained relatively consistent Academic Reputation scores ranging from 98.2 to 99.6 and an Employer Reputation scores from 96.2 to 99.4, out of 100.

New Faculty-Student ratio makes a difference

Guzzella cautioned; however, that while rankings signify an important measure of an institution, they represent an incomplete picture. For example, the statistical definition used to determine indicators such as International headcounts and Faculty-Student ratios are periodically refined. In compliance with a more detailed QS definition of the Faculty-Student ratio, this year ETH Zurich no longer reported on leave, continuing education, and mobility students in the headcount. This regulated data adjustment led to a significantly better result in the Faculty-Student ratio score that contributes to 20% of the overall ranking. Slight declines in some indicators were offset by an improvement in the average citation frequency of the researchers (Faculty Citations), resulting in an overall score of 95.3 out of 100 points.