Education and Skills

These universities are most likely to get you a job

Warwick University graduates throw their graduation mortar boards into the air in celebration on the day of their graduation ceremony in Warwick, Britain July 17, 2017. Picture taken July 17, 2017.      REUTERS/Russell Boyce - RTX3C37E

Top marks for employability ... Stanford comes first; who are the other nine? Image: REUTERS/Russell Boyce

Chinmay Jadhav
Senior Writer, Forum Agenda

Global higher-education think tank QS has ranked universities according to the employability prospects of their graduates.

American universities dominate the league table, with five schools among the top 10. Stanford University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) are in first and second places respectively, while Colombia is in seventh and U.C. Berkeley and Princeton take ninth and tenth.

The UK’s illustrious University of Cambridge, in fifth, is beaten by China's Tsinghua University and the University of Sydney, while the University of Oxford, named the world’s best university in the 2016 Times Higher Education rankings, comes in eighth.

Image: QS

This ranking is yet another indication that while the US and UK are still dominating higher education league tables, Asian universities are gaining ground fast. Peking University, Fudan University and the University of Hong Kong are in the top 20.

Phil Baty, Editor for Times Higher Education Rankings, said: “The rise of Asia has become something of a cliché in recent times, but our evidence – from six massive global surveys over six years, including the views of more than 80,000 scholars – proves the balance of power in higher education and research is slowly shifting from the West to the East.”

China is experiencing a "higher education boom", with a record-breaking 8m students expected to graduate from Chinese universities in 2017.

And the Chinese government intends to keep up the momentum – at the World Economic Forum's recent China meeting, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang spoke of the importance of making education "future-oriented".

Image: REUTERS/Brian Snyder

QS based its employability ranking on five indicators:

Employer reputation – graduate employers were asked to rank institutions that produced the best graduates.

Alumni outcomes – QS looked at the “educational pathways” of 21,000 of the world’s most “innovative, creative, wealthy, entrepreneurial and/or philanthropic” people to figure out which universities produced “world-changing” graduates.

Employer partnerships – the strength of universities’ ties with industry partners in research and other areas and collaborations with 2000 top global companies.

Employer-student connections – the presence of employers on each university campus.

Graduate employment rate – the proportion of graduates from each university who were employed within a year of graduation.

QS compiles other university league tables including the World University Ranking (by region and subject), the Top 50 under 50 (the fastest-rising ‘new’ universities) and the Best Student Cities.

Have you read?
Don't miss any update on this topic

Create a free account and access your personalized content collection with our latest publications and analyses.

Sign up for free

License and Republishing

World Economic Forum articles may be republished in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Public License, and in accordance with our Terms of Use.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.

Stay up to date:

Education

Related topics:
Education and SkillsJobs and the Future of Work
Share:
The Big Picture
Explore and monitor how Education is affecting economies, industries and global issues
A hand holding a looking glass by a lake
Crowdsource Innovation
Get involved with our crowdsourced digital platform to deliver impact at scale
World Economic Forum logo
Global Agenda

The Agenda Weekly

A weekly update of the most important issues driving the global agenda

Subscribe today

You can unsubscribe at any time using the link in our emails. For more details, review our privacy policy.

Why younger generations need critical thinking, fact-checking and media verification to stay safe online

Agustina Callegari and Adeline Hulin

October 31, 2024

Skills for the future: 4 ways to help workers transition to the digital economy

About us

Engage with us

  • Sign in
  • Partner with us
  • Become a member
  • Sign up for our press releases
  • Subscribe to our newsletters
  • Contact us

Quick links

Language editions

Privacy Policy & Terms of Service

Sitemap

© 2024 World Economic Forum