The US continues to lead the world university rankings, with Harvard again topping the list, according to the "The Times Higher Education" and QS World University Ranking 2009. Harvard achieved a perfect score in the categories examined by the survey.
University of Cambridge came in second, pushing Yale University into third place. University College London is ranked fourth, with Oxford University and Imperial College London sharing fifth place. US universities hold the next ten spots, including Princeton University, Columbia University, University of Pennsylvania, University of Chicago, and Johns Hopkins University. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and California Institute of Technology (CalTech) hold ninth and tenth place, respectively.
Three Israeli universities made the list of the world's top 200 universities, but this is nothing to be proud of. In the 2008 rankings, Hebrew University of Jerusalem was ranked 93rd; this year it fell nine places to 102nd place. Tel Aviv University kept its 114th ranking, but the Technion Israel Institute of Technology fell 23 places from 109th place in 2008 to 132nd place this year.
Despite the US's dominance in the World University Rankings, with 54 universities out of 200, it had four fewer universities this time than in last year's rankings.
The UK kept its position in second place, with 29 universities, while Canada, the Netherlands, and Germany had 10-12 universities each. Asian countries narrowed the gap. Japan has 11 universities in the rankings, China has six, and South Korea has four, and their universities climbed in the rankings.
The universities' overall rankings are based on weighted rankings in six categories. 40% of the overall score is based on an academic peer review of 10,000 academics, including university faculty and presidents each of whom picks 30 outstanding universities in their opinion. The other categories are: faculty-student ratio (20%); citations per faculty (20%); employer review (10%); international faculty and international students (5% each).
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on October 8, 2009
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