<p>Britain and America dominate list of best universities</p>
<p>"CAMBRIDGE and Oxford now rank among the top three universities in the world, second only to Harvard in the US, according to the latest global rankings published today.</p>
<p>Both British universities have moved up in the rankings for 2006, with Cambridge knocking the Massachusetts Institute of Technology off the No 2 position and Oxford advancing from fourth position to third. MIT is tied for fourth place with another US university, Yale...." </p>
<p>the rival guardian offers a different take on the story:</p>
<p>Oxbridge closes gap on Harvard in world university rankings </p>
<p>Cambridge and Oxford have edged closer to Harvard in the latest world university rankings, securing second and third places respectively in a list dominated by US institutions. </p>
<p>The 2006 world university rankings, published today by the Times Higher Education Supplement (THES), reveal that Oxford and Cambridge are now Harvard's closest competitors after the US institution's lead slipped from 13% last year to just 3% this year.</p>
<p>your pleasure in this fact is as palpable as it is perverse. as for princeton, well, it's fortunate to have fallen <em>only</em> to #10, since last year's #10, ecole polytechnique, fell all the way from #10 to #37 (followed closely by geneva, up 49 spots to #39). otago was a bit more lucky, up a whopping 107 spots to #79. such incredible volitility betrays a shoddy rankings methodology.</p>
<p>I had intended to stop after posting the initial link, without comment,but your snarky observation was automatically emailed to me and seemed to require a response.</p>
<p>Yale is at #4? Above Berkeley? That's suprising, even for a most ardent Yale troll. I think PosterX altered the methodology. Must have included some categories like "number of martini bars within a 1.2 mile radius of a library with the word Sterling in its name."</p>
<p>such "observation" was present in your own, selectively presented article:</p>
<p>"Harvard, whose endowment of $26 billion (£13.8 billion) exceeds total annual funding for all British universities, tops the table but its lead over its closest rival has fallen, from 13 per cent last year to just over 3 per cent over Cambridge this year."</p>
<p>I simply pasted in the link and the opening paragraph, scottie. You are projecting again, as usual!</p>
<p>And Zepher ... I thought you'd be pleased.Stanford is ranked 4th among American universities, behind Harvard, MIT and Yale and ahead of Berkeley. Not too shabby!</p>
<p>There must have been some substantial changes in methodology. Several US schools have made gigantic leaps, notably Brown, Vanderbilt, and especially Emory.
Or perhaps they have been having data reporting problems à la University of Chicago?</p>
<p>Wow.. Emory jumps from 141 to 56, CWRU- from 109 to 60, Dartmouth from 117 to 61. Surely there was no playing with methodology, all those schools just somehow managed to make all these huge improvements in one year. </p>
<p>That's a nice testament to the ranking's quality.</p>
<p>Oh, and it's also funny how UCSF, ranked #17 last year and #20 in 2004, has completely disappeared from the list. Has it been burned to the ground ot something?</p>
<p>*The annual survey now in its third year rates the worlds universities by a number of factors including the opinions of fellow academics and of employers of graduates.</p>
<p>While Harvard is ranked number one overall, with Cambridge a close second and Oxford third, Cambridge leads the field in terms of academic opinion.</p>
<p>John OLeary, Editor of The THES, said:** These results show that academics think Cambridge is the worlds best university, with Oxford close behind. On this measure they both come ahead of Harvard. In addition, Cambridge is popular with employers. Its score on quantitative criteria such as international appeal and staff/student ratio provides numerical corroboration of its excellence.**</p>
<p>Professor Ian Leslie, Pro-Vice Chancellor for Research, said: It is very reassuring that the collegiate systems of Cambridge and Oxford continue to be valued and respected by peers, and that the excellence of teaching and of research at both institutions is reflected in this ranking.</p>
<p>Other factors taken into account in the rankings are the number of international staff and students, the ratio of students to staff and the number of research article citations per staff member.</p>
<p>The top ten universities in the overall ranking, with scores in brackets, are:</p>
<ol>
<li>Harvard University (100) </li>
<li>University of Cambridge (96.8) </li>
<li>University of Oxford (92.7) </li>
<li>Yale University (89.2)
4=. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (89.2) </li>
<li>Stanford University (85.4) </li>
<li>California Institute of Technology (83.8) </li>
<li>University of California, Berkeley (80.4) </li>
<li>Imperial College, London (78.6) </li>
<li>Princeton University (74.2) *</li>
</ol>
<p>Honestly, I'm at peace with the order of the ranking of the top 3 schools. Harvard, Cambridge and Oxford are really inseparable, and probably, the gap among them is very small. What I am bothered is how Yale took the lead over UC Berkeley and Stanford. Even CalTech does not deserved to be ranked higher than UC Berkeley. I know Imperial is an excellent school and very selective, but I do not think it should be ranked higher than Princeton. In other words, my top 10 should go like this:</p>
<ol>
<li>Harvard University </li>
<li>University of Cambridge </li>
<li>University of Oxford </li>
<li>University of California, Berkeley</li>
<li>Massachusetts Institute of Technology</li>
<li>Stanford University </li>
<li>Yale University </li>
<li>Princeton University</li>
<li>California Institute of Technology </li>
<li>Imperial College, London</li>
</ol>