November 8, 2007

American Institutions Fare Well in British List of World's Top Universities

American institutions dominate the latest edition of a ranking of the world’s top 200 international universities by the Times Higher Education Supplement and Quacquarelli Symonds, a company that provides career and education information. Fifty-seven American institutions made this year’s list, dubbed the “THES-QS World University Rankings,” which will be published online tomorrow. They include private universities, such as the eight Ivy League institutions, as well as public powerhouses like several University of California branches and the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor.

The BBC News, in a report on the rankings, noted that British universities had improved their performance on the list, claiming four of the top 10 spots. But the rest in that group were American. Harvard University was ranked No. 1, while Yale University and the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge tied for second place. Rounding out the top 10 were, in order: Imperial College London, Princeton University, the California Institute of Technology, the University of Chicago, University College London, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The THES-QS rankings, now in their third year, are based on reviews by faculty members and corporate recruiters, and measures such as the ratio of faculty members to students and how often faculty members’ publications are cited. The British list and a similar compilation produced by China’s Shanghai Jiao Tong University have helped to fuel internationally the kind of scrutiny and discussion that such popular ranking systems have long provoked in the United States (The Chronicle, May 25).

Amid growing international competition for foreign students, and because of the influence such lists wield on students’ decisions about where to study, scholars increasingly are raising questions about the methodology the rankings employ. The authors of a recent paper in BMC Medicine noted a number of problems in existing lists and suggested that, absent improvements, such rankings should be abandoned. —Aisha Labi

Comments

1. Someone should certainly raise “questions about the methodology the rankings employ” when it puts Imperial College and University College in that top-ten group. Apparently, “located in London” is a hidden term in the quality metric.

   — S. Britchky    Nov 8, 02:59 AM    #

2. without bragging too much, it’s worth pointing out that the #1 North American public university on this list is McGill in Montreal, Canada!

   — patrick gutteridge    Nov 8, 04:17 PM    #

3. The immaturity of these measures and rankings is shown by some universities rising a dozen points and others falling by similar amounts. This either means that the rankings are too crude, or that they are much too sensitive to the data used. Frankly, universities are pretty conservative enterprises, and it is highly unlikely that any one of them has implemented changes so dramatic as to allow substantial gains or declines in just a single year! Consumer beware…

   — Hassan Aref    Nov 8, 06:03 PM    #

4. way to go, eh!

   — Bill j    Nov 8, 06:16 PM    #

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