Right now, think of the best, most influential universities in the world; likely, Oxford and Harvard rank somewhere high in your mental real estate. While they’re among the top schools, the number one spot on a new survey of the best universities goes to California Institute of Technology, which beat out hundreds of the world’s most influential schools.
The Times Higher Education World University Rankings began criterion scored universities in five areas – citations (research influence), industry income, international outlook (staff, students and research), teaching and research (volume, income and reputation). Of these, teaching, research and citations were each worth 30% of the grade.
What this says is that money poured into R&D will yield bigger and better results on the survey than, say, having claim to a famous graduate. It says that results-oriented programs are held in higher esteem than, say, a school with a winning football team.
The group has also developed an iPhone application to personalize the results of the survey, giving the survey results’ appeal an appropriately current punctuation mark.
The survey will release a list of the top 50 schools broken down by subject area (Engineering and Technology; Life Sciences; Clinical, Pre-Clinical and Health; Physical Sciences; Social Sciences; Arts and Humanities) on October 13.
Caltech President Jean-Lou Chameau’s Blog noted the results of the survey with humor and a view toward the new school year: “Caltech is #1! Yesterday we learned that the Institute has been rated as the number one university in the 2011-2012 Times Higher Education global ranking of the top 200 universities, knocking Harvard University out of the top spot for the first time in the survey’s eight-year history. Academic rankings should be viewed with a fair amount of skepticism, however let’s enjoy this one, at least for one year!”
Also of note: 14 of the top 20 universities are located in the United States. Another four were located in the United Kingdom. All of the top 10 schools were located in either the U.S. or U.K. Being an English-based university has clout where the rankings are concerned.
Interestingly, Peking University and Brown University tied at the #49 with a total combined score of 65.6%, as compared with 80.5% or above for schools in the top 20.
Schools ranking between the 200 and 400 ranking in the rankings have had their scores withheld by THE.
Paying it Forward
Last month, the Association of American Universities released an announcement about partnership efforts between many of the nation’s universities, including California Institute of Technology, to promote the use of university-based research in community-building and enrichment. The idea is that advances in research in the universities would be used to enhance regional development.
It’s a lucky community that benefits from Caltech’s investments in research.
The survey will release a list of the top 50 schools broken down by subject area (Engineering and Technology; Life Sciences; Clinical, Pre-Clinical and Health; Physical Sciences; Social Sciences; Arts and Humanities) on October 13.
Will this list change the way that universities approach their research and production? Likely not. While it’s an interesting analysis of the marketability and competitiveness of the major universities around the world, and while people love lists, it may simply serve to force us to rethink our ideas of what a successful university looks like.