New THE World University Ranking

Graduate School
1

<p>New THE (Times Higher Education) World University Ranking 2010-2011
<a href="http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-university-rankings/2010-2011/top-200.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-university-rankings/2010-2011/top-200.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Top10:</p>

<p>1 Harvard University United States 96.1
2 California Institute of Technology United States 96.0
3 Massachusetts Institute of Technology United States 95.6
4 Stanford University United States 94.3
5 Princeton University United States 94.2
6 University of Cambridge United Kingdom 91.2
6 University of Oxford United Kingdom 91.2
8 University of California Berkeley United States 91.1
9 Imperial College London United Kingdom 90.6
10 Yale University United States</p>

<p>Seems that, they have changed the methodology a lot. And this one is quite similar to the fist publish in 2004.</p>

2

<p>Thank god, another set of rankings</p>

3

<ul>
<li>Here is an item that I wrote on this topic for a UK education site. I added a couple of bits to address this audience on College Confidential. I hope you find it worthwhile. *</li>
</ul>

<p>The Times Education Supplement rankings are not correlated properly to undergraduate quality. </p>

<p>The combination of “Research”, “Citation” and “Industry Income” portions of the rankings account for 65% of the overall score. These measures do not consider or reflect quality of undergraduate learning and/or programs, nor do they even measure the inputs associated with undergraduate experiences.</p>

<p>More interestingly, the main, and significant, further issue is its “Teaching” measure which takes highly into account (i) peer review, (ii) percentage of PhDs among overall student base, (iii) PhD awards per student, (iv) income per student, (v) PhD awards. </p>

<p>In summary, measures (ii) through (v) really have nothing to do with the undergraduate academic experience as all are focused on doctorate program inputs and outcomes. The Times uses a rather weak excuse that “We believe that institutions with a high density of research students are more knowledge-intensive, and that the presence of an active postgraduate community is a marker of a research-led teaching environment valued by undergraduates and postgraduates alike”. Undergraduates may value research - particularly in pure and applied science departments - but it is a massive stretch to correlate PhD programs to opportunities for undergraduates to teaching quality.</p>

<p>As a result, many colleges that receive the highest undergraduate teaching rankings in US News - such as Dartmouth and Brown - are ridiculously low in their Teaching rankings here… all because these schools do not have extensive PhD programs.</p>

<p>If we add up the sum of ranking proportions attributed to “Research”, “Citation”, “Industry Income” and “Teaching” parts (ii) through (v), we arrive at 80% of the total score. Of the remaining 20%, 5% is for international mix of students and faculty. This is no method for analysing undergraduate programs, and was never intended to do so. We should not use it for these purposes.</p>

<p>The Times ranking is viewed by those who investigated its methodology as at best a decent ranking of doctorate programs, but not a good ranking for undergraduate programs.</p>

4

<p>Duh . . . most intelligent people have figured out that The, QS and ARWU are based on PhD and graduate school.</p>

<p>Even for graduate school its still a very dodgy ranking. I could write at least 20 paged analytical paper extensively criticizing its methodology if I wanted to.</p>

5

<p>the ranking looks legit except that i’d replace Imperial with either Chicago or Penn or Columbia and bump Yale to #9.</p>