The California Institute of Technology has retained the top spot in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings for the second year in a row. Oxford and Stanford  tied for second place, pushing ahead of Harvard University, which came next on the list.

American universities continue to dominate the list, which is one of the most closely scrutinized in the increasingly crowded field of university rankings. But although American universities hold 76 of the top 200 spots, 51 of them have dropped in the rankings, reflecting what the list’s editor, Phil Baty, said in a statement was a sign of “the start of the decline of a world-leading university sector” due to cuts in public financing for universities.

The faltering lead of the United States comes as a growing number of institutions from the Asia-Pacific region have improved their performance, the result of a vast…

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The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has displaced the University of Cambridge in the top spot of the QS World University Rankings, one of higher-education’s most closely watched listings. A news release describing the results says that this year’s rankings reflect “a global shift in emphasis toward science and technology” and that MIT owes its new dominance to “its superior citation rates and student/faculty ratio, alongside an increase in international faculty.”

The University of Cambridge, which had held the top spot in the previous two years, dropped to second place, followed by Harvard, which led the list from 2004 to 2009. As with the rankings produced by Times Higher Education and China’s Shanghai Jiao Tong University, the upper echelons of the QS list are dominated by American and British institutions, but more diversity is apparent further down the tables, …

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American institutions are once again dominating one of the most closely watched international university rankings, the academic ranking of the world’s top 500 universities, published on Tuesday by Shanghai Jiao Tong University, in China. Harvard remains in the top spot, followed by Stanford, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the University of California at Berkeley. As was the case last year, all but two of the top 10 institutions are in the United States, with the Universities of Cambridge and of Oxford occupying the fifth and 10th spots, respectively.

Israel and Australia have both increased the number of universities they have in the top 100, with three for Israel and five for Australia, the third highest after the United States and Britain. Five Chinese universities have moved into the top 500 for the first time, in a demonstration of the rapid development of…

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By the end of the decade, four out of 10 of the world’s university graduates will be from either China or India, according to a new analysis from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. In 2010 the two countries accounted for 29 percent of people age 25 to 34 with higher-education degrees, a figure that will rise to 41 percent by 2020. The growth signals a shift in higher-education attainment, with wealthy countries’ share of the global population of university graduates declining in the years ahead.

According to the analysis, in 2000 the United States’ share of 25- to 34-year-olds with university degrees was 17 percent, but by 2010 it had declined to 14 percent, and by 2020 it is projected to be just 11 percent. China’s share, in contrast, rose from 17 percent in 2000 to 18 percent in 2010, and is projected to be 29 percent by the end of the decade. The…

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A prolific Egyptian scholar who published hundreds of his own articles in a journal that he edited has lost a claim for libel against the publisher of Nature, which in a 2008 article said that most of his papers were “of poor quality” and had not been properly peer reviewed. Mohamed El Naschie’s output in the journal Chaos, Solitons and Fractals had helped to propel Alexandria University up the Times Higher Education rankings of the world’s top universities, casting a spotlight on the methodology used by the widely watched tabulation.

The judge in the case noted that it was apparent that Mr. El Naschie “had little if any interest in the norms of scientific publishing or the ethical considerations which underpinned them,” and that “his papers were not the subject of any or any proper peer review at all.” The academic told the court that he had not seen guidelines for…

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Eleven universities made the annual list of the Top 300 Organizations Granted U.S. Patents for 2011, three fewer than for 2010 but with one newcomer to the ranking: National Taiwan University, which finished 271st with 91 patents. The only other non-American university on the list, compiled by the Intellectual Property Owners Association, was Tsinghua University, of Beijing, with 104 patents, the same number as the previous year. As in 2010, the 10-campus University of California system was the academic institution receiving the most patents (323), followed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (160), Stanford University (153), and the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (144), the patenting arm for the University of Wisconsin at Madison. The California system, MIT, and Stanford each had fewer patents in 2011 than in 2010. IBM continues to be the leader in patents awarded….

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A new ranking of the world’s best universities created in the last half-century is much more geographically diverse than traditional measures, with six countries represented in the top 10 alone. While the United States and Britain tend to dominate most rankings, a new list from Times Higher Education of the top 100 institutions less than 50 years old is topped by the 26-year-old Pohang University of Science and Technology, in South Korea, followed by Switzerland’s École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne and the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. The highest-ranked American university is the University of California at Irvine, in fourth place. Over all, the United States has fewer institutions represented in the list than both Britain and Australia.

Times Higher Education used the same indicators to compile the list that it uses for its well-known ranking of the…

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Led by Yale School of Management, a group of 21 top-flight business schools is setting up a new global network with the goal of expanding international partnerships. The members include worldwide powerhouses like the London School of Economics and Political Science, Insead, and Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, as well as lesser-known institutions such as the University of Ghana Business School and the University of Indonesia Faculty of Economics. The group, which met in New Haven last week, hopes to go beyond the faculty and student exchanges and shared degree programs that are now common. For one, the partners hope to encourage faculty members to undertake joint research in areas of mutual interest, such as sustainability, social inclusion, and entrepreneurship and innovation. They also hope to involve companies in the network.

Four countries that are among the top destinations for international students have released a joint code of ethics meant to improve the integrity of international recruitment. The statement of ethical principles for student recruitment, agreed to by Australia, Britain, Ireland, and New Zealand, calls on outside recruiting agents to engage in transparent business practices and says they should disclose fees paid by students and parents and commissions paid by universities. It will be up to each country, however, to decide how to carry out and enforce the practices. The United States, which has no national policy on student recruiting, was not a party to the agreement, although some of the principles reflect ethical guidelines developed by the American International Recruitment Council, an independent organization that certifies overseas recruitment agents.