Harvard again tops Times list of world's best Universities for 2006

Colleges & Universities A-Z Harvard University
21

<p>Compare the somewhat UK-centric list compiled by THES with the Shanghai rankings, for which the selection formula seems a bit less subjective - and hardly putting the thumb on the scale for Chinese institutions:</p>

<p>1 Harvard Univ 100</p>

<p>2 Univ Cambridge 72.6</p>

<p>3 Stanford Univ 72.5</p>

<p>4 Univ California - Berkeley 72.1</p>

<p>5 Massachusetts Inst Tech (MIT) 69.7</p>

<p>6 California Inst Tech 66</p>

<p>7 Columbia Univ 61.8</p>

<p>8 Princeton Univ 58.6</p>

<p>8 Univ Chicago 58.6</p>

<p>10 Univ Oxford</p>

<hr>

<p>The Shanghai top 100 list has 53% from the US, and 10% from the UK;
The THES top 100 list has 33% from the US, and 16% from the UK, by my count.</p>

<p><a href="http://ed.sjtu.edu.cn/rank/2006/ARWU2006_Top100.htm%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://ed.sjtu.edu.cn/rank/2006/ARWU2006_Top100.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

22

<p>Imperial on top of Princeton!? </p>

<p>This ranking is ridiculous. People who produced this list are absolute bonkers. Whoever follows blindly this ranking is even more retarded.</p>

<p>Any educated person knows that HYP and Oxbridge are the best universities in the world. Probably with Harvard on top. But Princeton at #10!?.... (==") P is arguably the best undergrad university in the world. </p>

<p>None of the world university rankings (Shanghai, Newsweek or Times) is actually sensible. The producers of these rankings should be shot.</p>

23

<p>Here's the link to the Newsweek "Top 100 Global Universities" for 2006 - with the top 10 shown below:</p>

<ol>
<li>Harvard University<br></li>
<li>Stanford University<br></li>
<li>Yale University<br></li>
<li>California Institute of Technology<br></li>
<li>University of California at Berkeley<br></li>
<li>University of Cambridge<br></li>
<li>Massachusetts Institute Technology<br></li>
<li>Oxford University<br></li>
<li>University of California at San Francisco<br></li>
<li>Columbia University </li>
</ol>

<p><a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14321230/site/newsweek/%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14321230/site/newsweek/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

24

<p>an even worse methodology.</p>

<p>"a full sixty percent [of a school's score in the newsweek global rankings comes] from absolute rather than relative numbers (like, e.g., total number of library volumes!), twenty percent from percentages of international students and faculty (schools don't exactly compete to maximize these numbers), and only the last 20% from reasonable measures like citations per faculty and student/faculty ratio. by this methodology, graduate-only UCSF is a better comprehensive university than three-fourths of the ivies, and the university of washington (not washington u., or even george washington u.) is one of the top 25 universities in the entire world."</p>

<p><a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showpost.php?p=2969107&postcount=10%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showpost.php?p=2969107&postcount=10&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

25

<p>I assume the primary reason the Newsweek list is even "worse" in your eyes is because it leaves your alma mater out of the top 10!</p>

26

<p>The Times - the world's largest newspaper, based in London UK - may have this statistical ranking, but their more official statement, in a recent feature article, was that Harvard and Yale are "the two greatest universities in the world" and have "surpassed" Oxford and Cambridge.</p>

27

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<p>i didn't say the <em>outcome</em> of the newsweek rankings was any worse, only the methodology. and it really is terrible. it ranks universities by the number of volumes in their libraries and their percentages of international students, for god's sakes! the times methodology, like that of u.s. news, has its shortcomings, sure, but it's at least defensible, and certainly not laughable.</p>

<p>btw, i note that princeton actually climbed about six points in this year's times rankings. although i think all the top schools probably did, thanks to the sharp cut in harvard's "lead."</p>

28

<p>Mind providing the link, Trollster? </p>

<p>I think you've been clinging to that offhand remark associating Yale with Harvard as an "item" since before the internet was invented, so I'll I'll understand if you can't provide it!</p>

29

<p>So, Scottie ... you think the way to rank libraries is what ....? "Books per student" ?</p>

<p>And since Harvard still sets the standard at 100 points, the also-rans don't exactly "cut into harvard's 'lead' " scottie: perfection can hardly be improved upon!</p>

30

<p>THE TIMES, 27 November. </p>

<p>LONDON UK</p>

<p>Yale's key to world status </p>

<p>[excerpt]</p>

<p>The leaders of arguably the two best universities in the world were in Oxford this week to be fêted by their alma mater. Amid the pomp and nostalgia, they can only have been reassured that the balance of academic power has shifted decisively in their favour since they first saw the dreaming spires. </p>

<p>Professor Richard Levin, President of Yale University, and Professor Neil Rudenstine, his opposite number at Harvard, were students at Oxford more than 30 years ago. The unique ceremony that brought them both back to Britain to receive honorary degrees served as an occasion for polite ribbing about the rivalry between America's most famous universities. </p>

<p>The more tempting comparison from a British point of view, however, is with Oxford and Cambridge. Yale, in particular, has striking similarities with our ancient universities: almost 300 years old, it is tiny by American standards with only 5,300 undergraduates, divided into colleges on the Oxbridge model, a byword for academic excellence and a breeding-ground for the great and the good. </p>

<p>[...]</p>

<p>Yale does not suffer to anything like the same extent as Oxford and Cambridge do from an image of social exclusivity. The size of its endowment ensures that any applicant who meets the stringent entry requirements can be supported financially, if necessary. More than 90 per cent of students receive some support, and the average debt on graduation is about £10,000 - a figure likely to be exceeded in Britain before long. </p>

<p>Professor Levin, who met a group of Vice-Chancellors in London during his visit, is convinced that the leading British universities will have to take the same route if they are to continue to compete with the best. "The current fees will not produce the money a top university needs, and I imagine that this will be an interim stage to a system more like the American one."</p>

31

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<p>sure they did, whether through their own improvement or harvard's decline. while i suspect it's the latter, i didn't express this initially, noting only the "sharp cut in harvard's 'lead,'" without attributing it to any particular reason. similarly, princeton has "set the standard at 100 points" in the last seven u.s. news rankings. this year, harvard fell from 100 to an "also-ran" 99, whether because of princeton's improvement or its own decline. any opinion on the reason for this?</p>

32

<p>Whatever makes you feel better, I guess!</p>

33

<p>Ok, this discussion is getting a little heated. </p>

<p>I think any and all ranking systems are a little suspect. Take, for example, Yale, which moved from #7 to #4 this year. In order for that to be true, Yale would have had to become institutionally superior to Stanford and Berkeley over the course of a single year. I'm pretty sure that's impossible. Either Yale was always better than Stanford or Berkeley and the new rankings are simply correcting the old ones, or Stanford and Berkeley are still better than Yale (though Yale may be gaining on them, or falling away from them, or whatever) and the new rankings are wrong. But there is just no way Yale could go from being "worse than" to "better than" two of the world's greatest universities in the span of a year - to say nothing of the schools that jumped 30 spots.</p>

<p>The problems with school rankings were best expressed, in my opinion, by Bruce Gottlieb when he wrote about the flaws in the US News and World Report Ranking after Caltech moved from tied for 4th (putting it around 9) to #1 in the span of a year:</p>

<p>"U.S. News denies that it changes the rules--as it does every year--simply to change the results. Robert Morse, U.S. News' statistical guru, explained to me that this year's ranking procedures are an "improvement" over last year's. Doesn't that imply, I said, that last year's rankings were inferior? And shouldn't U.S. News apologize to anyone who made "one of the most important decisions of your life"--possibly turning down Caltech for Princeton--based on rankings the magazine itself now regards as inaccurate? Morse replied that he hadn't said the earlier ratings were inferior. But if something improves, I pressed him, doesn't that mean that it was less excellent before the improvement? Morse grudgingly allowed that I was free to make that inference." (<a href="http://www.slate.com/id/89623/%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.slate.com/id/89623/&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p>

<p>All the best,
DMW</p>

<p>P.S. An interesting quote on how the US News and World Report has been historically rigged to have some arrangement of HYP come out on top, because it confirms people's intuitions and therefore validates their methodology: " "We've come up with a list that underscores intuitive judgments. We did not set out to underscore [those] judgments; we set out with a methodology. That it wound up this way is to me both a justification and a discovery that we're on the right track." This is a masterpiece of circular logic. Elfin is saying: 1) We trust our methodology because it confirms our intuition; and 2) we are confirmed in our intuition because it is supported by our methodology."</p>

34

<p>I submit that the traits of any institution scoring 100/100 on a given survey likely provided the model for the criteria of that survey. If one were to survey the world's universities in search of the ones having the most virtues in common with the University of Padua, it would be little surprise to discover that the University of Padua ranked first.</p>

35

<p>I submit that the Revealed Preference rankings likely provide the best evidence as to which schools the top applicants feel "have the most virtues" - or at least the virtues that are important to them as prospective students.</p>

<p><a href="http://post.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/hoxby/papers/revealedprefranking.pdf%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://post.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/hoxby/papers/revealedprefranking.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>See also Hansmann, "Higher Education as an Associative Good"</p>

<p><a href="http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ffp9901.pdf%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ffp9901.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>... and Frank, "Winner Take All in Higher Education"</p>

<p><a href="http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ffp0001s.pdf%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ffp0001s.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

36

<p>That's fair, Byerly, but the Euthyphro question is still practically shouting itself out here.
The Hansmann is interesting.</p>

37

<p>I have a feeling that Professor Hansmann's thesis about the inelasticity of demand based on price is about to be tested, as Harvard and Princeton launch a new era in which it becomes politically correct to increase the fraction of the student body coming from the lowest economic quadrant. </p>

<p>In the "financial aid war" that will almost certainly escallate further, those big endowments will count for more than ever. I sense it may be misgivings about this confrontation that is causing President Levin of Yale to cling to the early action program he once denounced. His goal seems to be a compact to share the top students rather than to battle for them - sort of a treaty among the major powers to carve up the world's natural resources, educationally speaking.</p>