<p>Hunt, the only thing Caltech is really missing is humanities departments, and fewer and fewer students major in those fields. If you are going to exclude Caltech as a university for having only rudimentary programs in things like literature and history, you would also have to exclude Chicago for not having engineering, a field which nearly all research universities cover and which is extremely popular among students.</p>
<p>The way the THE ratings are constructed, institutions are not really penalized for failing to offer one or more fields. If they were, Caltech’s rank would be lower . . . and so would be the ranks of most, if not all, of the non-UK European universities, as well as places like Imperial which are dear to many hearts at the Times (of London). Caltech is an institution any country would love to claim as its own.</p>