The University of Michigan ranks #21 among the world’s best universities, according to the newly released 2015-16 Times Higher Education World University Ranking. As usual, US and UK universities dominate the top ranks in the UK-based survey, with a noticeable tilt toward UK institutions. Top 25:
Caltech
Oxford
Stanford
Cambridge
MIT
Harvard
Princeton
Imperial College London
ETH Zurich - Swiss Federal Institute of Technology
Chicago
Johns Hopkins
Yale
UC Berkeley
University College London
Columbia
UCLA
Penn
Cornell
University of Toronto
Duke
Michigan
Carnegie Mellon
London School of Economics
University of Edinburgh
Northwestern
In addition to #10 Chicago, #21 Michigan, and #25 Northwestern, several other Big Ten/CIC schools ranked highly, including #36 Illinois, #50 Wisconsin, #65 Minnesota, #75 Penn State, #90 Ohio State, and #99 Michigan State. Rounding out the Big Ten: #113 Purdue, #117 Maryland, #123 Rutgers, #201-250 Indiana, #201-250 Iowa, and #301-350 Nebraska.
By subject matter, THE ranks Michigan #8 globally in social sciences, #15 in engineering & technology, #17 in arts & humanities, #18 in clinical, pre-clinical & health, #22 in physical sciences, and #26 in life sciences.
I saw that yesterday. It went down this year in reputation and school rank, so I did not bother to post it. Nevertheless, the engineering ranking went up slightly.
There’s always a little jostling around at the top of these rankings from one year to the next… Last year Harvard was #1, this year it’s #6. Last year the University of Tokyo was #11, this year it’s #43. Last year ETH Zurich was #16, this year it’s #9. Last year Caltech was #9, this year it’s #1. Last year, University College London was #25, this year it’s #14.
These movements are inconsequential statistical noise, likely due mainly to tweaks in the methodology. The main point is that Michigan is in awfully elite company. Whether it’s ranked #15 as last year or #21 as this year, it’s clearly viewed by at least this particular major UK publication as among the very best of the world’s universities, with across-the-board strengths in all academic areas. And my own judgment as an academic is that this is a pretty accurate assessment.
My understanding is that, beyond methodology tweaks, the sample of schools was doubled from 400 to 800.
I also thought bclintonk’s post was interesting: “By subject matter, THE ranks Michigan #8 globally in social sciences, #15 in engineering & technology, #17 in arts & humanities, #18 in clinical, pre-clinical & health, #22 in physical sciences, and #26 in life sciences.” <== this is a typical result for Michigan in polls: the school ranks above its aggregate rank in almost every category and the aggregate rank becomes, somehow, the minimum of the set. Given the foregoing, the #21 total ranking is lower than 4 components, a wash with a fifth, and only somewhat (within “noise” or error bar) lower relative to the sixth component.
In this case the aggregate ranking appears to be unfavorable versus the component rankings. I understand that there are weightings and other “technical” reasons why this might eventuate, but I’m always impressed that it seems to break this way.
I am very familiar with Imperial and UCL. They are not better than Michigan. They lack the breadth, depth and resources to offer Michigan real competition.
That being said, globally, ranking Michigan around #20 is perfectly fair,
True rjk, but I expect them to be more realistic. 6 UK universities among the top 25, but not a single French, German or Japanese university?
Anyway, I do not believe it is possible to rank universities cross borders. There are far too many differences to effectively compare universities in the UK to universities in the US to universities in Germany etc…
Like every British ranking I’ve seen, the THE has an “international” component (bonus points for either the percentage of student body or faculty from different countries) which seems to boost up the British schools more than the American and continental ones. Possibly because Europe has a ton of countries and English is the second language for more Europeans than French/German/Italian/etc.
That component seems to be in the British rankings in large part to boost up the British schools.
If you want just a straight research ranking (which is really what the THE is with bonus points for international composition), I would just look at ARWU.
The French do not do well in research rankings because their elite instiutions tend to be small and specialized.
“Like every British ranking I’ve seen, the THE has an “international” component (bonus points for either the percentage of student body or faculty from different countries) which seems to boost up the British schools more than the American and continental ones.”
Excellent point PurpleTitan. This is obviously very self-serving on part of those British rankings, but I suppose their core constituents are mainly British, so it makes sense. Over 50% of undergraduate students at LSE are international, and over 25% at Imperial, UCL, Cambridge and Oxford. Very hard for US universities to compete. 10% is considered a very high international student rate in the US.
“If you want just a straight research ranking (which is really what the THE is with bonus points for international composition), I would just look at ARWU.”
While I agree, the ARWU is not without its eccentricities. It too seems to have a regional preference, in their case, the AsiaPac region (UCLA #12, UCSD #14, UDub #15 and UCSF #18). Since ARWU is a Chinese ranking, that would also make sense.
“The French do not do well in research rankings because their elite institutions tend to be small and specialized.”
Again, excellent point. Schools like Marie Currie, Science Po, Ecole Normale Superieure and Ecole Polytechnique etc… are all amazing, but very specialized. Which is why I think global rankings make no sense whatsoever. Take Ecole Nationale Superieure. It enrols only 3,000 students (only 10% of which are undergrads), and yet, it has produced a dozen Nobel Laureates and 10 Fields Medalists! We are talking purely alums here. That’s insane. No US university has produced more than 3 Fields medalists.
Appreciate your concurrence, @Alexandre, though ARWU, by how they rank, almost can’t have a regional bias (besides maybe an English language bias, which is almost inevitable as many of the top research journals publish in English). UCLA, UCSD, UCSF, and UDub are among the top research universities in the world. I doubt you’d find many academics who’d disagree.
I agree PurpleTitan, but then what do you make of Michigan’s ARWU ranking? Michigan is #1 or #2 (depending on the method of calculation) globally in research spending and output, so why is it ranked #22 overall according to ARWU?
I think all rankings tweak their methodologies to serve their markets, ARWU included. In East Asia, where ARWU is published, West Coast universities are revered.
^^^^I totally agree with Alexandre. All of these rankings are skewed to make their “pet” schools appear higher. The TImes has too many British schools ranked near the top. The ARWU has too many California schools ranked near the top. In the latter case, it’s no coincidence that the California market has a huge Asian population.
Surprisingly, it appears that the “Award” component of ARWU’s methodology negatively affects Michigan’s total score:
“The total number of the staff of an institution winning Nobel Prizes in Physics, Chemistry, Medicine and Economics and Fields Medal in Mathematics. Staff is defined as those who work at an institution at the time of winning the prize. Different weights are set according to the periods of winning the prizes. The weight is 100% for winners after 2011, 90% for winners in 2001-2010, 80% for winners in 1991-2000, 70% for winners in 1981-1990, and so on, and finally 10% for winners in 1921-1930. If a winner is affiliated with more than one institution, each institution is assigned the reciprocal of the number of institutions. For Nobel prizes, if a prize is shared by more than one person, weights are set for winners according to their proportion of the prize.”
“The total number of the staff of an institution winning Nobel Prizes in Physics, Chemistry, Medicine and Economics and Fields Medal in Mathematics.”
The Nobel and the Fields are such tail events that while such winners add luster to a faculty, they are pretty meaningless as indicators of faculty excellence. Michigan has something like 6,000 faculty members (tenure, tenure track, instructor). Even half a dozen of such awardees would not meaningfully move the needle as to either scholarship or instructional heft. Further, the Nobel is typically granted for work done 25 to 40 years earlier and tells us where science in a field has been and where it went for 10 years after the work was done, but little about the future direction of a given field.
Of course this very short list of prizes leaves out many of the ones that actually count as far as potential value added to the instructional side of the picture: Sloan fellowship (said to be a strong indicator of Nobel potential…Michigan has probably had over 90 such fellows); the MacArthur fellowship…Michigan has had 23 alums (ranking it in the top 10 nationally, inclusive of publics and privates) win the prize and something like 35 on faculty (with significant overlap); the Pulitzer; the Guggenheim; the faculty Fulbright; national academy members in the arts and sciences…
In other words, the very short of list of prizes which are awarded points under this system is more notable for what it leaves out than for what it includes.
By the measure of citations, citation strength, patents, major teaching prizes won, research dollars awarded through grant, Michigan routinely ranks in the top 5-10 in the country by component; by aggregate, in the top five faculties in the country. Any other ranking is just wrong. Not residing in the top 10 doesn’t scan when the programs taught by those faculty members show 101 programs in the top ten in the nation, and a graduate program ranking (in aggregate) of 4th in the country (behind: Berkeley, Harvard and Stanford).
@Alexandre and @rjkofnovi, UMich may spend a ton of research money, but that doesn’t mean that it would rank at the very top by whatever research criteria that a research ranking uses. UW-Madison is similar in having huge research expenditures and ranking right around UMich in ARWU.
I’ve noticed that UIUC is another Midwestern B10 flagship who’s CS department fits a similar pattern: UIUC CS is considered among the best, but the top 4 in CS in terms of prestige are MIT, Stanford, CMU, and Cal. However, UIUC CS blows all other CS departments away when it comes to getting research money. It also (like UMich CS) has a reputation for being practical (as opposed to theoretical, which is where UChicago CS and the top UK CS programs are at). It could be that with the cutbacks in state support, good flagship STEM programs are incented to focus research on areas where there is a lot of funding available rather than sexy prestige areas that don’t bring in much money but are more likely to win awards and publication in prestigious journals.
BTW, it’s difficult to say that ARWU has a Pacific Rim bias when UCLA, UCSD, UCF, UDub, and Stanford make up 5 of the top 9 universities by research grants in the country. Cal isn’t up there because it doesn’t have a med school, but its research expenditures are about the same as UMich research expenditures: http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/infbrief/nsf13305/nsf13305.pdf
“In other words, the very short of list of prizes which are awarded points under this system is more notable for what it leaves out than for what it includes.”
So true blue85. These rankings use data that are skewed to elevate the status of the schools that appeal the most to their readership. That is undeniable.