Education: Top 10, 50, & 100 University Rankings from Around the World

[HenryDavidT]

Please, look at the METHODOLOGY and CRITERIA for those rankings, so you have a better understanding of why or how a university is ranked as it is...

Don't take any one, or two, ranking or ideas or universities or things as "THE MOST IMPORTANT."

Instead, take the whole survey --- and this is ONLY ONE OF MANY, WITH VARYING DEGREES OF CRITERIA --- as a snap shot of different countries and regions of the world AND WHAT THEY PUT INTO THEIR EDUCATIONAL SYSTEMS, from pre-K through post-Doctorate studies and institutions...

On of the INEVITABLE take-aways from this and others similar to it is:

you can't make much progress in society if you don't have or can't build schools that nurture your people in the various major indexes like business, law, government and governance, basic science, education, high tech, research, medicine, mathematics, computers, etc.

Saying your reality, your system, your understanding of the world and basic knowledge... is deeper or more real, like some types of governments do, and like a lot of religious people do... just doesn't cut it.

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Fancy & detailed reading:

http://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/world-university-rankings/2015#sorting=rank+region=+country=+faculty=+stars=false+search=

Simple graph:

http://www.theguardian.com/higher-education-network/ng-interactive/2015/sep/15/top-200-universities-in-the-world-the-table

Of the top 10 universities America has 5 and Britain has 4.


Switzerland's Swiss Federal Institute of Technology is the lone one from outside of the US and England that made the top 10.

From the top 50...

The USA has 18.

MIT, Harvard, Stanford, Caltech, University of Chicago, Princeton, Yale, Johns Hopkins, Cornell, University of Pennsylvania, Colombia, UC Berkeley, UCLA, Duke, University of Michigan, Northwestern University, UC San Diego, and Brown University.


England has 10.

I actually am continuously surprised in how such a small island nation like England is out ranking the poor USA on a per capita basis, in terms of keep holding on to top universities.

I am even more surprised that tiny island Hong Kong has 2, while giant 1.4B mainland Chinese Communist China has only 2.

Top 100 is more interesting for what's lacking.

And that fact that India, a nation of 1.3B, with millions of very brilliant students and scientists, failed to have a single university ranked at the top 100... I think that is both strange and sad.

Of the top 200, they have two: number 147th (the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore) and 179th (the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi).

[HenryDavidT]

> Fancy & detailed reading:
>
> http://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/world-university-rankings/2015#sorting=rank+region=+country=+faculty=+stars=false+search=
>
> Simple graph:
>
> http://www.theguardian.com/higher-education-network/ng-interactive/2015/sep/15/top-200-universities-in-the-world-the-table
>
> Of the top 10 universities America has 5 and Britain has 4.
>
>
> Switzerland's Swiss Federal Institute of Technology is the lone one from outside of the US and England that made the top 10.
>
> From the top 50...
>
> The USA has 18.
>
> MIT, Harvard, Stanford, Caltech, University of Chicago, Princeton, Yale, Johns Hopkins, Cornell, University of Pennsylvania, Colombia, UC Berkeley, UCLA, Duke, University of Michigan, Northwestern University, UC San Diego, and Brown University.

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Of the top 50 universities in the world, if you notice, the state of California has 5: Stanford, Caltech, UC Berkeley, UCLA, and UC San Diego.

And to put that in a more stark contrast, Russia has NONE.

And it turns out California's ECONOMY is, indeed, bigger than Russia's economy, even given the fact that Russia's economy relies very heavily on fossils like oil and gas, but almost all of the economy of the state of California is produced using human brain power and pure labor...

Anyway, when it comes to PUBLIC universities like the University of California, ACADEMIC REPUTATION is usually top notch...

But since they run many large campuses, they don't have the large endowments like Yale, Harvard, Caltech, MIT, Princeton, etc., so they CAN'T offer as much food, accommodation, comfort, parties and connections, etc., as the SINGLE CAMPUS private schools... so they SEEM to lag way behind...

But if you judge universities by PURELY RESEARCH and ACADEMICS, public schools, in reality, aren't doing as badly as they LOOK to be.

Take an example, my poor alma mater, the University of California, San Diego, which ranks at #44 over-all....

UC San Diego's ACADEMIC reputation, at 98 points, is just 2 points below MIT's 100 point ranking.

But, again, if you factored in other NON-ACADEMIC criteria like Teacher-Student RATIOS, International students/faculty & other X, Y, Z variables, etc. which public universities can't compete with well funded private, single institutions, you suffer, being poorer public schools... That is the single biggest reason why in most surveys well funded private schools like Caltech, MIT, Yale, Harvard, etc. usually rank so high, when in academic alone, many public universities are more or less on a par with them at the very top....

[HenryDavidT]

Having perfect SAT scores and being high school valedictorian guarantees no acceptance to top schools....


http://news.yahoo.com/feds-princeton-didnt-discriminate-against-asian-applicants-164106985.html

US Dept. of Education: no evidence top school Princeton discriminated against Asian American prospective students.

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Princeton accepts only about 10 percent of undergraduate applicants. The university notes that having perfect SAT scores and being valedictorian of a high school class don't guarantee admission to the school.

[HenryDavidT]

Time Magazine's slightly different take on the "top universities" from around the world...


https://www.timeshighereducation.com/world-university-rankings/2015/reputation-ranking#!/page/0/length/25


Again, don't swallow everything given here as some fake gospel of truth; rather, just look at the list as a ROUGH GUIDE in how top research universities from around the world at perceived by students, professors, the news media, parents, research scientists and scholars, etc.

Fact of the matter is, the ACADEMICS among the top, say, 50 or so universities are EXACTLY the same. One of the FEW differences between a BUSINESS PROFESSOR from, say, Harvard or Yale and one from another top university from, say, a country that is SMALLER, with less business, etc., is that that professor of business from Harvard or Yale KNOWS MORE ABOUT PEOPLE into business.

But in terms of the quality of professors in, say, chemistry, mathematics, biology, computer science, history, etc., there is really NO SUBSTANTIAL DIFFERENCE between one teaching at Harvard and one teaching at another top research university, even if the latter is ranked at, say, 49th place... and in this randomly picked case, #49 happens to be GEORGIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY, which is the counterpart of California's Institute of Technology... although, yes, MORE professors at Caltech win the Nobel Prize in chemistry, physics, etc.,