Why are some of the oldest universities in the world ranked so poorly?

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For example the University of Vienna (Austria) is ranked around 87th in the world yet it's the oldest institution in the german speaking world (1365), why is this? Is language a reason?
 
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agrocadabra said:
For example the University of Vienna (Austria) is ranked around 87th in the world yet it's the oldest institution in the german speaking world (1365), why is this? Is language a reason?

Being old doesn't necessarily mean good.
 
Yeah but it seems that the rankings are very skewed towards universities whose first language is english.
 
agrocadabra said:
Yeah but it seems that the rankings are very skewed towards universities whose first language is english.

Depends on which ranking system you use. For example Oxford isn't ranked very highly in physics in the official ranking system for research used here in the UK (RAE) but still does well in The Times ranking aimed at students.

Also, there is no reason to expect old to mean good. There was not a single world-class university in physics in the US before about 1920 or so (which is why Oppenheimer&co went to Germany etc for their PhDs), but now that has of course changed.
 
That list makes no sense whatsoever, at least not when it comes to the universities I am familiar with.

Moreover, who do you compare Johns Hopkins with MIT?
As far as I know there is almost no overlap, so it is really an apples and pears issue
 
Are not Russian Universities good though for example? What about german universities?
 
German universities suffer from a lack of funding.