I do question these rankings partly because we have no way of verifying the quality of education from an American perspective. For example, it’s very easy to attend Cambridge and Oxford because each are falling apart physically and broke. If you have the cash, you are in. Second, many of the Chinese universities appear to be nothing more than communist think tanks with poor facilities. And in today’s world, how easy is it to publish in an academic journal? I’ve done it thrice. In short, American standards exceed that of most second and third world countries, including the EU and especially the far east, except perhaps Japan.