The California Institute of Technology, a private institution with just 2,200 students in Pasadena, CA, takes the number one slot again this year in the 11thannual World University Rankings, put out by Times Higher Education (THE), a London magazine that tracks the higher ed market. Three years ago Caltech bumped Harvard out of first place. Harvard comes in second this year, followed by the University of Oxford in the UK and then Stanford. See our slideshow above for the top 10 schools and click through the THE link above to get a list of all 400 schools it ranks.
Unlike Forbes’ own ranking or the much-read U.S. News & World Report list, both of which measure only US schools, THE casts its net around the world.THE also emphasizes global scholarship and reputation and does not consider things like entry requirements, graduation rates, professor ratings by students or alumni salaries. “We put the heaviest weight on research and innovation, research productivity and research excellence,” explains THE rankings editor Phil Baty. “Our list is really about producing new ideas, about innovating, about attracting skills and talented people into a country,” he adds. “It’s also about bringing business money into the higher education center.” THE also gives a lot of weight to the universities’ efficacy as graduate institutions, weighing things like the number of doctorates an institution awards and it puts a lot value on the extent to which its top scholars teach and mentor undergraduates. THEconsiders only universities, not colleges.
We think THE’s rankings are worth a story in part because both universities and governments are taking them seriously. Baty says that the Japanese government has tapped the rankings to plan the prime minister’s growth strategy and the Russian and Indian governments have invited THE staffers to talk about how those countries could make their universities more competitive. Japan has five schools on the top-200 list. Russia had no schools on the list last year but its Lomonosov Moscow State University moved into slot No. 196 this year.
