There are several rankings of universities. They can be interesting but also have obvious limitations. I find Shanghai’s Jiao Tong University’s the most interesting (especially the international nature of it). Their real focus seems to be in providing a way for China to get a feel for how they are progressing toward developing world class universities (interesting slide presentation on their efforts). The methodology values publications and faculty awards and is provides a better ranking of research (rather than teaching). Results from the 2007 rankings of Top 500 Universities worldwide showing country representation of the top schools:

China has 1 ranked in the 151-202 range as do Taiwan, Korea and Brazil. Singapore has one in the 102-151 range. The other country without any in the top 101 with representation in the next 101 is Italy with 3 schools in the 102-151 range and 2 in the 152-202 range. India has 2 in the 305-401 range.

Top 10 schools (same schools as last year, Cambridge moved from 2nd to 4th):

• Harvard University
• Stanford University
• University of California at Berkeley
• Cambridge University
• Massachusetts Institute of Technology(MIT)
• California Institute of Technology
• Columbia University
• Princeton University
• University Chicago
• Oxford University

University of Wisconsin – Madison is 17th 🙂 My father taught there while I grew up.

I find this information interesting (even with the limitations). I repeat my prediction from last year (as would most, I would imagine) that China and India will have much greater representation 10-20 years from now (those gains will have to come at the expense of others and I would imagine Europe and the USA will show relative declines).

Related: 2006 rankings of the World’s Best Research Universities – Worldwide Science and Engineering Doctoral Degree Data – China challenges dominance of USA, Europe and Japan

Some of the things I wish they would adjust.

• Some method of valuing company creation (by “alumni”, even people that do so before graduating, and faculty) – giving larger value the greater the economic gain provided by the company. Also other ways of valuing economic value creation.
• Split credit for Nobel and Fields winners among where they are when they won, where they did the research and where they are now (I can imagine this would be a huge hassle still I think it would be interesting – and it seems we should be able to devote a few people to making developing some really interesting data I think many people would find interesting). Now all credit goes to where they are when they win. They also give credit to the schools the award winners received degrees from (which I like).
• Add some additional awards to the calculations – there is a problem in that many awards are geographic or country specific still ideally add more.
• Additional examining of the citation importance – I like what they are doing, I just would like to see more in that area.
• Include more journals in the count of output of articles – again I can understand the difficulty, I just would like to see that added, ideally.