Compare these rankings to the Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2013-2014
The University of Oxford has topped an annual global ranking measuring universities performance on graduate employability.
Oxford, which has climbed three places in this year’s Global Employability University Survey, displaced Harvard University at the top of the ranking, while the University of Cambridge (in third), Stanford University (fourth) and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) (fifth) completed the top five.
The list is compiled by French human resources consulting group Emerging Associates along with Trendence, a German polling and research institute.
It is based on responses from 2,700 recruiters in 20 countries, who were asked which of their local universities produced the best graduates.
There are 14 UK universities in the top 150, with University College London (UCL) (13th) and the University of Edinburgh (15th) joining the Oxbridge pair in the top 20.
However, universities in the US dominate the table, securing 45 places in the ranking overall, including seven of the top 10.
According to Emerging Associates, the performance of smaller northern European countries such as the Netherlands, Switzerland and the Scandinavian countries had surprised this year.
“In a general way, those universities that specialise in business tend do well, which is understandable, but what is evident in a number of countries is that the universities that do best are those that have managed to adapt themselves to recruiters’ expectations - irrespective of their specializations,” said Sandrine Belloc, director of Emerging Associates.
Ms Belloc added that, in addition to existing methodology, recruiters were asked to put forward “their idea of what a perfect university might look like”.
The results suggest that student internships are highly valued by employers, she said.
Jonathan Black, director of the careers service at Oxford, told Times Higher Education that when students graduated and entered the world of work, they had to be prepared for “a 50-year game”.
“When you graduate at 21 you’re going to have to work for 50 years…We’re trying to educate people for life,” he said.
He added: “We don’t embed employability in the curriculum but what we do as a careers service is talk to employers and find out what they think our students are lacking and then try to supplement [their studies] with extracurricular programmes.”
