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Cream of the crop: Stanford, MIT and Harvard are the world’s most innovative universities

Study International Staff

25 Oct 2019

For the fifth consecutive year, Stanford University, MIT and Harvard topped Reuters’ ranking of the World’s Most Innovative Universities, a list that identifies and ranks the educational institutions doing the most to advance science, invent new technologies and power new markets and industries.

Stanford holds onto its top spot year after year because it produces a steady stream of innovations that are cited by other researchers in academia and private industry, a key measure of the ranking of the world’s most innovative universities, which was compiled in partnership with Clarivate Analytics, based on proprietary data and analysis including patent filings and research paper citations.

Eight of last year’s 10 highest-ranked universities remained in the top 10, and 18 of the top 20. The highest-ranked university outside the US, Belgium’s KU Leuven (#7), is a nearly 600-year-old institution that maintains one of the largest independent research and development organisations on the planet. The highest-ranked university in Asia is Pohang University of Science & Technology, or POSTECH (#12), an institution founded in 1986 by the South Korean steel company POSCO, noted for its unique ties to industry.

Overall, the United States continues to dominate the list, with 46 universities in the top 100. Germany is the second best performing country with nine universities featured. France climbs to third, with eight universities on the list; Japan, South Korea and the United Kingdom each have six; China has four; the Netherlands and Switzerland have three; Belgium, Canada, Israel and Singapore have two, and Denmark has one. Considered on a regional basis, North America has 48 universities in the top 100, Europe has 32 (up five from last year), Asia has 18 (down five), and the Middle East has two. There are no universities in the top 100 located in Africa, South America or Oceania.

France shows the biggest improvement this year, with all its universities making big gains, including new entrants Aix-Marseille Université (#96) and Sorbonne Université (#56). In contrast, Japanese universities continue to lose ground on the global ranking: three Japanese universities dropped off the list in 2019, and the institutions that remained fell an average of 16 places.

For more on the Reuters Top 100, including a detailed methodology and profiles of the universities, visit https://www.reuters.com/innovative-universities-2019. For reprints, e-prints, logo and accolade licensing, permissions, plaques and other products, please visit http://bit.ly/2LjbptV.

These innovative universities are research-intensive and highly impactful. Source: Shutterstock

The Reuters Top 100: The World’s Most Innovative Universities

Rank	Name	Country
1	Stanford University	USA
2	Massachusetts Institute of Technology	USA
3	Harvard University	USA
4	University of Pennsylvania	USA
5	University of Washington	USA
6	University of North Carolina Chapel Hill	USA
7	KU Leuven	Belgium
8	University of Southern California	USA
9	Cornell University	USA
10	Imperial College London	UK
11	University of Texas System	USA
12	Pohang University of Science & Technology (POSTECH)	South Korea
13	University of California System	USA
14	University of Erlangen Nuremberg	Germany
15	Johns Hopkins University	USA
16	California Institute of Technology	USA
17	EPFL – Swiss Federal lnstitute of Technology Lausanne	Switzerland
18	University of Cambridge	UK
19	Vanderbilt University	USA
20	Yale University	USA
21	University of Michigan System	USA
22	University of Minnesota System	USA
23	Duke University	USA
24	Northwestern University	USA
25	University of Illinois System	USA
26	University of Tokyo	Japan
27	University of Toronto	Canada
28	Columbia University	USA
29	Seoul National University	South Korea
30	Georgia Institute of Technology	USA
31	University College London	UK
32	University of Oxford	UK
33	University of Colorado System	USA
34	Korea Advanced Institute of Science & Technology (KAIST)	South Korea
35	Osaka University	Japan
36	University of Wisconsin System	USA
37	Baylor College of Medicine	USA
38	University of Utah	USA
39	University of Chicago	USA
40	ETH Zurich	Switzerland
41	Tsinghua University	China
42	Oregon Health & Science University	USA
43	Kyoto University	Japan
44	University of Montpellier	France
45	Sungkyunkwan University	South Korea
46	Technical University of Munich	Germany
47	Case Western Reserve University	USA
48	Technical University of Denmark	Denmark
49	University of Manchester	UK
50	Emory University	USA
51	University of Zurich	Switzerland
52	University of Pittsburgh	USA
53	University of British Columbia	Canada
54	Ohio State University	USA
55	Peking University	China
56	Sorbonne University	France
57	Kyushu University	Japan
58	National University of Singapore	Singapore
59	Ruprecht Karl University Heidelberg	Germany
60	Delft University of Technology	Netherlands
61	Tohoku University	Japan
62	Purdue University System	USA
63	University of Massachusetts System	USA
64	Universite Paris Sud – Paris 11	France
65	Princeton University	USA
66	University of Paris Descartes	France
67	Nanyang Technological University	Singapore
68	Tufts University	USA
69	State University of New York System	USA
70	Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz	Germany
71	Leiden University	Netherlands
72	Hanyang University	South Korea
73	Rutgers State University New Brunswick	USA
74	Tokyo Institute of Technology	Japan
75	University of Munich	Germany
76	Yonsei University	South Korea
77	Universite Claude Bernard – Lyon 1	France
78	Indiana University System	USA
79	Dresden University of Technology	Germany
80	University of Bordeaux	France
81	University of Iowa	USA
82	University of Freiburg	Germany
83	Boston University	USA
84	University System of Maryland	USA
85	Wake Forest University	USA
86	Zhejiang University	China
87	Carnegie Mellon University	USA
88	Hebrew University of Jerusalem	Israel
89	RWTH Aachen University	Germany
90	University of Connecticut	USA
91	Grenoble Alpes University	France
92	University of Florida	USA
93	Utrecht University	Netherlands
94	Technical University of Berlin	Germany
95	Tel Aviv University	Israel
96	University of Aix-Marseille	France
97	University of Virginia	USA
98	Ghent University	Belgium
99	Kings College London	UK
100	Shanghai Jiao Tong University	China