Identifying the best : the CHE ExcellenceRanking 2010

The CHE Centre for Higher Education Development has designed an "ExcellenceRanking", a ranking of a selected group of European Universities. The CHE applied a two-step approach for analysis. First, all European departments in the surveyed fields were compared by a few general indicators. Second, for those departments that excelled in these indicators, an indepth analysis was run based on an institutional questionnaire and a student survey. The first issue of the ranking, released in 2007, concentrated on the natural sciences and mathematics. The second issue, released in 2009, was dedicated to economics, political science and psychology. In 2010, the study was repeated for the natural sciences. This paper covers the results from the 2009 and 2010 issues. (HoF/text adopted)