Young University Rankings 2021: the ages of resilience

View the THE Young University Rankings 2021 results

The Covid-19 pandemic has been unsparing in its impact, but it has affected different groups in varying ways. And a key factor has been age.

Older generations are, on average, more likely to become seriously ill after contracting the coronavirus, and consequently, they have been among the first to receive doses of the Covid vaccines.

Meanwhile, experts and the media have depicted young people as among the worst-affected in terms of the economic and social impact of the pandemic, with online learning and the challenging job market taking its toll on their mental health and well-being.

But are there differences in the way that older and younger universities have been affected by the crisis?

In many ways, higher education institutions across the globe, like populations, have faced the same challenges in the shift to remote working, student applications and enrolment and levels of funding.

But leaders of young universities suggest that there have been some differences, too. In our analysis, we explore whether the flexibility and innovation of younger universities means they have adapted better to the pandemic, or whether older institutions’ higher levels of funding and prestige make them better placed to withstand the effects of the crisis.

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A similar tension is borne out in the data behind our rankings. A comparison of the performance of young and established institutions in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings between 2018 and 2021 shows that newer universities have generally been improving at a faster rate than their older counterparts at both metric and subject level. However, established universities are making more progress, on average, on their levels of income – a factor that is likely to be increasingly important during the global pandemic-related recession.

For those leaders looking to chart a new course for their institution in the wake of Covid-19, or to establish a new university entirely, experts in the US and the UK suggest the potential models to consider and what the sector can learn from the great expansion of global campuses in the 1960s, while the president of the 45-year-old Maastricht University explains how his institution has found success in such a short space of time.

As David Staley, associate professor of history at Ohio State University, writes in one of these pieces: “Perhaps we are just at the start of a new historical moment when educational visionaries will establish a cluster of new, daring, creative, alternative universities.”

If that’s the case, we look forward to featuring these post-pandemic institutions in future editions of the Young University Rankings.

ellie.bothwell@timeshighereducation.com

Countries/regions represented in the THE Young University Rankings 2021

Note: excludes countries with only one ranked institution