Delft University of Technology has become the first Dutch university to reach the top 50 of the Times Higher Education rankings since 2016 while Utrecht is boycotting the listing.

Delft rose from 70^th to 48^th place in the latest Times Higher Education list of the best universities in the world. Wageningen had topped the Dutch listings for the past four years but has now gone down from 59^th to 64^th place.

In total, six of the 13 Dutch universities are in the top 100. Amsterdam is in 61^st place, Leiden 77^th, Groningen 79^th and Erasmus in Rotterdam 99^th.

Utrecht University, which was in 66th place last year, is not listed in this year’s top 250 rankings at all because it no longer takes part in the data collection process.

A spokeswoman for Utrecht University said the decision to no longer cooperate is part of the university’s open science strategy.

It is almost impossible to measure the quality of an entire university, with all its different departments, and give it an overall score, the spokeswoman said. “We also think rankings place too much emphasis on scores and competition, but science is best served by cooperation. Working together and open science are two of our key values.”

The rankings, which are topped by Oxford in England, are based on teaching, research environment, research quality, industry, and international outlook.

This article was updated to reflect Utrecht’s response.