Times of London World Universities: U.S. Leads Again

Oct 6, 2011
John Willingham

Oxford moves up, but Caltech wins - Dreamstime

Caltech replaces Harvard at the top of the Times' survey of world's best universities. Seven American schools in top 10. Penn State, Wisconsin, NYU rise.

The Times Higher Education Supplement has released its world university rankings for 2012, and Caltech, Harvard, Standford, Oxford, and Princeton hold the top five spots. This is the first time in eight years that Harvard has not been ranked number 1 in the world in the Times survey.

Cambridge University edged out Harvard for the top spot in the recent QS World University Rankings.

Cambridge, MIT, the Imperial College of London, Chicago, and Cal Berkeley round out the top ten.

Notable changes include the following: Penn State rose dramatically from 109 to 51; the University of Wisconsin improved from 43 to 27; NYU went from 60 to 44; and Columbia jumped from 18 to 12. Cornell fell from 14 to 20. Even MIT dropped, from number 3 to number 7. Such changes in the rankings are not unusual.

The Times' Ranking Criteria

The rankings have so many dramatic changes among universities ranked 51-100 (see below) that many universities may question why the go to all the time and effort to participate in this (and other) surveys. Here's how the Times explains its rankings:

"Our rankings of the top universities across the globe employ 13 separate performance indicators designed to capture the full range of university activities, from teaching to research to knowledge transfer. These 13 elements are brought together into five headline categories, which are:

Teaching — the learning environment (worth 30 percent of the overall ranking score)
Research — volume, income and reputation (worth 30 percent)
Citations — research influence (worth 30 percent)
Industry income — innovation (worth 2.5 percent)
International outlook — staff, students and research (worth 7.5 percent)."

The rankings are sure to be controversial. The Times data provider for the project was Thomson Reuters. The top 50 American universities, while showing some shifts in the rankings, do not have near as many surprises as the next group of American universities ranked from 51 to 100.

Here is a list of American universities in the top 50, with their 2012 ranking to the left and their 2011 ranking in parentheses to the right.

American Universities in the Top 50

1. Caltech (2)

2. Harvard (1)

2. Stanford (4)

5. Princeton (5)

7. MIT (3)

9. Chicago (12)

10. UC Berkeley (8)

11. Yale (10)

12. Columbia (18)

13. UCLA (11)

14. Johns Hopkins (13)

16. Penn (19)

18. Michigan (15)

20. Cornell (14)

21. Carnegie Mellon (20)

22. Duke (24)

24. Georgia Tech (27)

25. Washington (23)

26. Northwestern (25)

27. Wisconsin (43)

29. Texas (did not participate)

31. Illinois (33)

33. UC San Diego (32)

35. UC Santa Barbara (29)

38. UC Davis (53)

41. Washington Univ. St. Louis (38)

42. Minnesota (52)

43. North Carolina (30)

44. NYU ((60)

49. Brown (55)

American Universities ranked 51-100

There was more volatility in this group of American universities. See especially the changes for Penn State, Rice, USC, UC Irvine, Notre Dame, Rutgers, and Michigan State.

51. Penn State (109)

54. Boston University (59)

55. USC (30)

57. Ohio State (66)

59. Pitt (64)

64. Massachusetts (56)

70. Vanderbilt (51)

72. Rice (47)

75. Emory (61)

77. Tufts (54)

77. Colorado (67)

81. Rochester (did not participate)