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As of time of writing, the University of Oxford is top of the Times Higher Education world university ranking list, while the University of Southampton is 118th. (Nothing special about the THE, Oxford, or the University of Southampton - I'm just picking examples.)

Because a university's research is usually a major factor in these rankings, an immediate implication of this is that as a whole, Oxford's research is "better" than Southampton's. Why is it better? I can think of some explanations:

• Professors at Oxford are smarter than those at Southampton. Obviously the smarter you are, the better your research.


• Professors at Oxford are more motivated than those at Southampton. Maybe they work 24/7 while those at Southampton work 9-to-5.


• Professors at Oxford have more resources than those at Southampton. For example perhaps they have more + bigger grants they can apply for, and with more money, they can hire more students + conduct experiments using equipment their counterparts at Southampton don't have.


• Professors at Oxford are luckier than those at Southampton. They "just happened" to pick topics that later led to massive advances and Nobel prizes, which made them academic superstars. Oxford then gave them very attractive job offers to lure them there. Now it's a rich-get-richer situation - once you are famous, other people read + cite you more too.

Are any of these explanations accurate? Are there other factors I've not thought of?

I think a moderate impact comes from a university in the anglosphere. It is the language of publishing.

Also students tend to want to come to the anglosphere, not the converse. Thus there is a brain drain in one direction. You might think this is just from the research prestige itself but I disagree. E.g. many students want to immigrate to the anglosphere even if they leave research. This is probably not just a language effect but also the culture, business climate, freedom, etc.

This is a very interesting sort of question. Unsurprisingly, it's surely not the case that people in one region are naturally smarter than those in another. Once we believe that, it is possible to see how the generally-pretty-uniform-brains of people are "steered" in different ways in different cultures.

E.g., in the so-called anglosphere, there is a bit more encouragement to "make progress", as opposed to "adhere to orthodox canons". For those of us in western europe or north america, this principle is completely unsurprising... but, suprisingly (to us here?), this idea is not universal.

In the U.S., for example, in mathematics, the top universities actively try to "collect" the most creative (by a somewhat orthodox criterion) people. Those unis with good endowments can afford to throw lots of money at this goal. There you are.

But, duh, there are many very good people who are not swept up in status-game issues, e.g., if they're more interested in spending their days doing the thing rather than promoting themselves...

Nevertheless, it does tend to be true that the most innovative ideas are most circulating at high-end places. By my observation, this is only distantly connected to funding or status per-se, but, over the long term, does depend on the local status-culture at the place. This can be populist or not, depending. Some math faculties can, as a group, be amazingly Luddite. People are people...

In mathematics, at least, it is not easy to come up with worthwhile new ideas. In the face of bureacratic pressure to "do new stuff all the time", one way out is to "solve problems" endlessly (which ought to be mostly a spin-off of improved technique, but don't tell the admins...)

Then, after filtering out lots of noise, we do sometimes find that the "elite" places have people who have contributed genuinely new ideas (regardless of PR noise about it, and regardless of many other things... whose idiocy does not subtract from the worth of the thing being ridiculously hyped) may be more concentrated in "elite" places. Partly for good reasons, partly for silly. And don't believe the "press releases"? :)

The amount of endowment/grants/economic abilities of a school also affects the rankings because if a school gets more grants, that means they may complete more research. For example, there are more than 5-10 professors in very top universities who bring grants to the school and do research with that grant. This automatically affects the quality and quantity of the research. I also agree with previous answers that the language of publishing is English. Technically, if a university is in an English-speaking country, it has more chance to be ranked higher. Moreover, the citation score is one of the most important ranking criteria in THE or QS ranking systems. So, if there is more quality research, there is a high probability that they will be cited more.

Your question is a bit circular. The "best" universities are at the top of the list because it's a list of the "best" universities -- however, that is defined. :)

What makes a "top" university is largely a rich-get-richer feedback loop: The "best" universities can attract the "best" researchers, which makes them the "best" universities. The "best" researchers can get the most funding, which helps them do the "best" research. The "best" universities get the most money, which helps them spend more on research.

That explains why older universities tend to have higher rankings. They have had a long time to gradually build up that feedback loop. However, external factors have a big impact -- availability of funding and university management is important, as is the desirability of the location/country. Countries like the UK and US have a lot of good universities because they are attractive places to live and their government provides adequate research funding and, importantly, this has consistently been the case for decades or centuries.

One important point you are missing from your list: Some professors are teaching six courses per year -- they have no time for research. Other professors are only teaching one course per year -- they have plenty of time for research.