Swiss universities are in the top class

Members of the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) Global University Leaders Forum (GULF) include the Federal Institutes of Technology in Zurich (ETH) and Lausanne (EPFL), as well as the universities of Princeton, Harvard, Yale, Oxford and Stanford, and China’s Tsinghua University.

The GULF members meet annually in Davos to discuss higher education policy issues.

Now, a study has shown that the universities are responsible for more than seven per cent of scientific output.

The study was published by the rankings organization Times Higher Education (THE) and Elsevier, one of the world’s largest scientific publishers.

If you were to combine the 27 GULF universities into a fictitious nation, the publication performance of these universities would rank third globally behind the USA and China, but ahead of other important research nations such as the UK, Japan and Germany, explained the ETH in a statement.

Every year, GULF universities invest just under 20 billion dollars in top-class research and attract more than three billion dollars in third-party funding.

This equates to approximately 62,000 dollars for each researcher and teacher at these institutions, according to the study.

At the same time, the GULF universities are responsible for every eighth research citation in all patent applications worldwide.

The study also showed that the 27 universities are particularly well networked with the economy, primarily working with large corporations like Microsoft, IBM, Google, GSK and Pfizer.

They have published some 45,000 scientific papers over the past five years working in collaboration with private companies.

For Lino Guzzella, President of ETH Zurich, the results show the social relevance of the world's best universities.

He said in the statement: "It is all the more important that we are able to hold our top position in international rankings despite increasing competition. To do this, we need autonomy, continued solid and long-term funding from the federal government, and the innovative ideas of our researchers and teachers."