The Times Higher Education Ranking 2008 has been published and could not help noticing that Germany and Netherlands have both 11 universities in the top 200. That is 57% of the Dutch Universities and only 2% of the German Universities. Sometimes quality beats quantity. The Germany magazine “Der Spiegel” summarizes Germany’s disappointment over this result, since the government had recently pored 1.900.000.000 Euro into the “Elite” universities.
Interesting list! And rather painful for Germany. On the other hand, can the 1.9 billion euro the German government invested in elite universities pay out in short-term? Doesn’t it take a couple of years to renew curricula? Or to fully integrate english as the primary language. Because this is one of Germany’s biggest problems.
Consider the fact that the majority of dutch Master’s theses are written in English. It’s a pity that so much German students still publish their Master’s thesis in their native tongue… making these available in English gives a boost to the accessibility. This will probably also generate a rise of the German universities.
Just an observation.
The ranking is supposed to be “The Top 200 WORLD Universities” and, having found Eindhoven University of Technology on 128th place, I find it hard to believe that there is no single university from Central / Eastern Europe in top 200.
But maybe geography is not the strongest point of people preparing the ranking and they have missed a spot on the map.