ROME – Italian universities have done significantly better than in previous years in the most recent QS World University Rankings. Milan Polytechnic leads the way, breaking into the top 150, in a ranking which saw Boston’s Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) break the record in taking first place for the eighth consecutive year, reports La Repubblica.

  There are 34 Italian universities in this, the 16^th edition of rankings published annually by Quacquarelli Symonds (QS), considered one of the most reliable adjudicators in the world for higher education. This is up from 30 Italian institutions ranked last year, making Italy the seventh most represented country in the world.

Of the Italian universities, 14 showed an improved ranking, including Milan Polytechnic, which rose from 156^th to 149^th. The new entries, which are Parma, Udine, Salerno and the Polytechnic of Bari, all entered in the 801-1000 range. The biggest climber was Florence University, which jumped from the 501-510 range all the way to 448^th.

 The five Italian universities which fell in ranking are Ferrara, Brescia, Pisa’s Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies, the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa, and Rome’s Cattolica.

 Ben Sowter, director of the QS intelligence unit, observed: “Italy achieves remarkable excellence in its universities. We hope that its governing class sustains this with adequate investment and far-sighted politics.”

 The top of the table is dominated by American and British institutions. Three U.S. universities occupy the top three spots (MIT, Stanford University and Harvard University respectively). The Oxford University is ranked fourth, making it the highest ranked institution in Europe, and Cambridge falls to seventh.

 The QS rankings give distributed weight to various factors, such as academic peer review, the faculty to student ratio, and the institution’s reputation as an employer, based on a survey of graduate employers. While some in the past have criticised an overreliance on peer review, which contributes 40 per cent to the final ranking, QS argues that this is a fair way of judging, since academics are in no way incentivised to manipulate results.

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