The world dominance of US universities has waned further in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2015-2016, despite the fact that the country boasts almost a fifth of institutions in the table. A total of 147 US universities feature in the top 800 — the largest THE rankings to date — including the California Institute of Technology, which claims pole position for the fifth consecutive year.

However, there are signs of decline for the traditional Western powerhouse lower down in the table. The US now has 63 universities in the Top 200, down from 74 last year, and 77 the year before. Six of them make the Top 10, compared with seven last year. After Caltech, they are: Stanford (third), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (fifth), Harvard (sixth — its first time outside the top four in the rankings’ 12-year history), Princeton (seventh) and the University of Chicago (10th). The UK’s universities of Oxford (second), Cambridge (fourth) and Imperial College London (eighth), and Switzerland’s ETH Zurich — Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ninth) fill the rest of the Top 10.

According to Phil Baty, THE rankings editor, the US’ leading status as the world’s top magnet for academic and student talent “cannot be taken for granted”, citing figures that show that 47 states in the US have implemented higher education funding cuts since the global recession of 2008.

Soft power benefits

Asked to identify something associated with Manchester, most people would probably mention its football clubs, Coronation Street or one of its numerous indie bands. But the city should perhaps be recognised for a lesser-known export in recent times: world leaders, suggests a study that highlights where international statesmen and women were educated in the UK.

Eight current prime ministers and presidents attended the University of Manchester, according to research by the Higher Education Policy Institute (Hepi) published on October 1. Only Oxford University has produced more overseas leaders, boasting a total of nine, including five monarchs.

Among those who studied at Manchester are Michael D. Higgins, president of the Republic of Ireland; Iceland’s president Olafur Ragnar Grimsson and Iraq’s prime minister Haider Al-Abadi, as well as elected leaders from Palestine, Mozambique, Somaliland and two Caribbean countries. Those counting Oxford as their alma mater are arguably better known. They include Australia’s new prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, Hungary’s premier Viktor Orban, and the kings of Belgium, Bhutan, Jordan, Norway and Malaysia.

Other leaders educated at British universities include Iran’s president Hassan Rouhani, who studied prehistoric archaeology at Glasgow Caledonian University; Colombia’s president Juan Manuel Santos, who studied at the London School of Economics, and Tuvalu’s prime minister Enele Sopoaga, who studied at Oxford and Sussex universities.

Overall, 55 world leaders from 51 countries have studied in the UK, including three at Cambridge University and three at Bristol University, says Hepi. “We punch above our weight internationally partly because of the soft power benefits that arise from educating the world’s leaders,” says Nick Hillman, director of Hepi.

Efforts by the Home Office to restrict the number of foreign students coming to the UK ignore the soft power advantages of educating future world leaders and damage “our links to parts of the world with which the UK’s history has long been intertwined”, says Hillman. “There is a patriotic as well as an internationalist case for teaching people from around the world, and we forget it at our peril,” he adds.