World's Top 50 universities

Every year, thousands of universities worldwide produce graduates, undertake research and publish scientific papers. How to find out who are the leaders today in higher education? How to choose among them?

A number of global rankings are published annually. Some are focusing on academic achievements, reputation in science and the number of graduates awarded with Nobel Prize or other notable awards. Undoubtedly, these indicators are very important, but for future students, it could be only an indirect confirmation of the quality of the learning process.

Here, we represent the current World University Rankings by The Times Higher Education, which uses more than a dozen indicators to evaluate the institutions' real activities for more comprehensive comparison. The most important groups of indicators we consider:

• Teaching - is based on the evaluation of the teaching reputation, also includes such statistics as a student-to-staff ratio, doctorate-to-bachelor’s and doctorates awarded-to-academic staff ratios. It also estimates institution's financial status and ability to provide students and faculty with the required infrastructure.
• Research - is based on the university's reputation in research by the opinion of academics, also evaluates the funding of scientific programs and their productivity level.

In the table below the top universities are ranked by the overall score with an indication of their Teaching Rank (score), which is very helpful for future students seeking to obtain a world-class degree, and Research Rank (score) for those who plan further to continue in the science field.

A distinctive feature of the global leaders in education is an active promotion of distance learning. Most of them are offering a wide range of online courses in many disciplines (free or for some charge). It's a great opportunity to enhance your knowledge level in the leading institutions and get access to courses from the best professors and trainers, being thousands of kilometers away.