Stanford University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University top the third annual Reuters Top 100 ranking of the world's most innovative universities. The Reuters Top 100 aims to identify and rank the educational institutions doing the most to advance science, invent new technologies, and power new markets and industries. Compiled in partnership with Clarivate Analytics, the ranking is based on proprietary data and analysis of numerous indicators including patent filings and research paper citations.
The most innovative university in the world, for the third consecutive year, is Stanford University. Located in the heart of California's Silicon Valley, Stanford has long played a key role in the development of the modern networked world: A Stanford professor designed the basic communication standard for the Internet, and university alumni founded some of the biggest tech companies in the world, including Google, Intel, Hewlett-Packard and Netflix. At present, the university continues to consistently produce original research and technology. Innovations that originate at Stanford are frequently cited by researchers elsewhere in academia and in private industry.
The top ranks of the World's Most Innovative Universities remain largely unchanged, with nine of last year's 10 highest-ranked universities remaining in the top 10. And the most elite institutions are almost all large, well-established universities based in the US and Western Europe. Rounding out the top three are MIT and Harvard, which have held onto their respective 2nd and 3rd place rankings for the past three years. In fourth place is the University of Pennsylvania, which climbed four spots from #8 last year. The highest ranked university outside the US, Belgium's KU Leuven (#5), is a nearly 600-year-old institution that maintains one of the largest independent research and development organisations on the planet.
In contrast, there are only two Asian universities in the top 20, both of which are based in South Korea, and one of them actually teaches the majority of its classes in English: South Korea's KAIST, formerly the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, ranked #6. Established in 1971 by the Korean government, KAIST was modeled after engineering schools in the US, and initially funded with a multimillion-dollar loan from the United States Agency for International Development.
The top 100 consists of 51 universities based in North America, 26 in Europe, 20 in Asia and three in the Middle East.
For more on the Reuters Top 100, including a detailed methodology and profiles of the universities, visit www.reuters.com/innovative-universities-2017/.
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