In this year's competing Shanghai Ranking (tenth highest Dutch university) and QS World University Rankings (seventh highest Dutch university), TU/e scored relatively better than in the THE rankings, in which we dropped down one place, despite a better total score than last year (52.4 as opposed to 50.6).

The big Dutch winner in this ranking is TU Delft, which in 59th place bumps Wageningen University from the highest national position. A couple of points are striking, including that Delft scores much higher than TU/e in the field ‘research’ (72.9 versus 43.5), while TU/e performs better when it comes to ‘citations’ (71.7 as opposed to 67.3 for Delft). In addition, TU/e scores relatively poorly for ‘education’ whereas according to Elsevier the education offered at Eindhoven is in fact top notch, better than at, say, Delft.

In view of this, it should come as no surprise that the universities association VSNU points out that rankings are not the be-all and end-all. After all, for example, only limited measurement of the quality of education is possible. “Rankings never give a complete picture of the performance of universities,” says the association in a statement. Nonetheless, the various rankings are taken very seriously and regarded as valuable sources of information sources by researchers, international students and employers.

On Wednesday September 28 THE will publish its new rankings by subject.