^Caltech was in 1st position for a number of years in THE rankings until three years ago or so when it was bumped by the Oxbridge. Caltech had always scored lower than Oxbridge or MIT in the international outlook score. This year it caught up somewhat in that benchmark.
“Homer”!
I have no idea what they’re measuring, if ND is #157 and ASU is #155. 
I’ve only recently started looking at THE, so I had no idea that Caltech has had #1 position in the past. Another thing that jumps out at me is the flipping between Princeton and Harvard. Harvard was ahead of Princeton last year, but they flipped their positions this year.
When it comes to undergrad rankings, Princeton is (USNWR) and should be ahead of Harvard, but THE rankings are largely based on research outputs and citations although granted their methodology has some subjective elements (e.g., reputation survey). Currently, Princeton’s total number of faculty is 1,289, including full, part-time and visiting, whereas Harvard’s total is 2,400 and more than 10,400 academic appointments in affiliated teaching hospitals. Even without the 10,400 academic appointments, Harvard’s total number of faculty is nearly twice as many as Princeton’s. Princeton, as everyone knows, doesn’t have Law, Medicine and Business schools and their grad programs are much smaller than Harvard in scale. While I’m cognizant that Princeton is a powerhouse when it comes to research outputs and citations, it nevertheless surprises me that Princeton’s now ahead of Harvard, albeit just one spot in the long ladder.
@TiggerDad Most data is normalized to the number of scholars so the difference in faculty size should not matter
Ah, that’s how they did it…
Once again all the worldwide rankings are based heavily on research productivity with little or no adjustment for the size of the school. Hence Dartmouth and Brown rank relatively low due to their small size. Please read the methodologies otherwise you are comparing apples and oranges.
In the Wall Street Journal / Times Higher Education rankings of US colleges, both Dartmouth College (at #12) & Brown University (at #7) are higher ranked than their World University rankings of #94 & #53 respectively.
A more accurate comparison between the two rankings would eliminate the non-US universities for the World University Rankings. Thus, Brown’s #53 ranking becomes #26, while Dartmouth’s #94 ranking becomes #39 once non-US schools are eliminated.
In the methods section, they state they normalize research income and number of publications according to size. That answers @TiggerDad ‘s question. Otherwise, yes the rankings favor institutions with a lot of faculty involved with research over those where faculty’s main activity is to teach
The number of outliers in the THE rankings is incredible. THE rankings have always been a joke. Anyone that considers THE World Rankings for anything, but a good laugh, is naive.
They are no worse, or better, than any other of the university rankings out there…
There’s no reason that a good researcher can’t be a good teacher, and vice versa. In fact, plenty of them are both. Cutting edge research provides great teaching materials and deeper or unique insights. Some great professors may not get rave reviews from all students (or even a majority of them) because some students just can’t keep up with the thought processes of these professors.
Even if an International student were to come to the U.S. – trying to dot my initialisms in honor of the N.Y. Times, as well as call everyone Mr., Ms., and Mrs. – but not have a great command of English – sorry for the extensive disconnect and tangential remarks, leading to a very poorly constructed sentence, as well as it being too lengthy – (s)he could still project very well in college here because (s)he would most likely study engineering, which all students regardless of language can connect. Similarly, Python, Java, and the rest are becoming the new international language. Therefore, I can see why the world rankings would place a great deal of importance on E schools.
Of course, there’s no guarantee that a good researcher will be a good teacher, either. I took classes from too many professors who gave priority to their research over their teaching. In fact, if you had a question, they’d get annoyed if you didn’t ask a TA first.
That’s called ineffective teaching. It’s a teacher’s job to try to make things understandable.
Rutgers is in the top 200 at #168