Observers of higher education rankings are accustomed to universities from the US dominating many of the top spots.

Last year¡¯s Global University Employability Ranking, based on which institutions¡¯ graduates are seen as the best by employers worldwide, was no exception: six institutions from the country featured in the top?10 and 34 in the top?150.

Although this represented a decline compared with previous years, it was still far ahead of any other nation.

But a new analysis of the ranking suggests that the US is actually a long way behind on graduate employability when the size of its student population is also taken into account.

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Human resources consultancy and employment research institute Trendence, which together compile the employability ranking, compared aggregate scores for each country or region in the list ¨C based on each university¡¯s position ¨C with data on student populations.

The results suggest that despite the US dominating the ranking, its performance is much weaker when considering that millions of students graduate from institutions without a global reputation among firms.

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Topping the index by some distance is Switzerland, with the Netherlands and Sweden also performing strongly. The UK comes ahead of the US and other English-speaking nations such as Australia and Canada, while?densely populated emerging countries such as China and India come bottom.

Laurent Dupasquier, associate director of Emerging, said that countries such as Switzerland, ¡°which tend to have a very vocational approach in their curriculum¡± or close cooperation with industry, tended to do better in the index ¡°than some countries that traditionally appeared to dominate the global rankings¡±.

¡°The fact that a small country like Switzerland with a very limited number of universities and higher education students places regularly five to seven institutions in the top?150 gives a clear indication that, in terms of performance, it must be doing something better than the others.¡±

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Various sources for student population data were used to calculate the index score, with some statistics excluding postgraduates or those studying at more vocationally oriented institutions.

Using a standard data source and definitions on student numbers ¨C such as from Unesco¡¯s Institute for Statistics ¨C does not alter the overall finding that Switzerland has the best performance and that the US is towards the bottom of the list.

However, the Netherlands¡¯ score is not as strong if students attending universities of applied sciences ¨C hogescholen ¨C are also included in the figures rather than just those enrolled at the country¡¯s research-intensive institutions.

simon.baker@timeshighereducation.com