Yet another University Ranking: Musical Chairs

Parent Cafe
1

<p>A England based group has come up with another list of top world universities.</p>

<p>Again musical chairs</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-university-rankings/2010-2011/top-200.html[/url]”>http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-university-rankings/2010-2011/top-200.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>But they are candid about some of the limitations of ranking</p>

<p>We are aware that higher education institutions are extraordinarily complex organisations. They do many wonderful, life-changing and paradigm-shifting things that simply cannot be measured. Data on some of their most valuable endeavours simply do not exist or cannot be meaningfully compared on a global scale; many of the proxies commonly used are less than satisfactory.</p>

2

<p>This is a pretty interesting ranking program, as far as I am concerned. I like its factors and weightings much better than USNWR.</p>

<p>A couple of cautions:</p>

<p>One factor is income from patents, etc., and private research. Many US institutions do not report this. For that reason, it is not weighted heavily, but even its light weighting accounts for several place differences in the upper reaches (e.g., Stanford reported data, Princeton didn’t). It’s also unclear to me that the institutions all used consistent definitions on this.</p>

<p>Second, among the measures of teaching quality they use the ratio of undergraduate students to graduate students. I’m not certain I agree with that.</p>

<p>Anyway, I am sure many here will be shocked at the high ranking of lots of public universities, as well as WHICH public universities are ranked highly (hint: not UVa, and Toronto bests McGill by a surprising margin). As is true with all international rankings that discount the selection decisions of 17 year-olds, the Ivies other than HYP do not show all that well compared to their competition.</p>

3

<p>To those that have always followed the international rankings, it looks much like they have always looked. Same basic players in the same general spots. USNWR is on its own, but for those who are academics with a global focus, this ranking system and all the others point to same basic pattern year after year. Not for every student, but for those who want or need to be in an intensive research setting, or looking to come from a highly regarded undergraduate program in a particular area (as judged by professors) because say, they want to go to graduate school, they are quite useful. </p>

<p>[home</a> | Top Universities](<a href=“http://www.topuniversities.com/]home”>http://www.topuniversities.com/)</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.topuniversities.com/[/url]”>http://www.topuniversities.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p><a href=“http://www.highimpactuniversities.com/rpi.html[/url]”>http://www.highimpactuniversities.com/rpi.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

4

<p>Boy oh boy, the local paper is all over this! :rolleyes:</p>

<p>[We</a> are number 23 - yipee!](<a href=“http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/education/2012914618_uwbest17m.html]We”>http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/education/2012914618_uwbest17m.html)</p>

5

<p>Except for the usual HYPSM etc. schools, there seems to be a bias in favor of large schools: e.g. UToronto has 66,000 full time students compared to McGill’s 27,000. Larger state schools trump small and medium sized schools: Rice, USC, Vanderbilt etc. Georgetown ranked at about 164???</p>

<p>Although the methodology claims to factor in faculty size, I’m suspicious.</p>

6

<p>On September 30th they are going to publish the rankings according to fields of study, which is, IMHO, a better gauge of where to choose to go than a general ranking. A school that might be tops in life sciences, for example, may not have another type of program at all.</p>

7

<p>Most US universities DO report patent and related income annually. COHE also reports the data.
Licensing Revenue and Patent Activity, 2008 Fiscal
Year
Name of institution
Licensing
income
Start-up
companies
formed
Licenses
executed
Total
active
licenses
New patent
applications
U.S.
patents
issued
Total research
spending
Northwestern U. $824,426,230 4 28 195 158 32 $368,169,430
U. of California
system $146,314,433 55 206 1,913 899 224 $4,403,662,006
Columbia U. $134,273,996 10 36 34 264 59 $640,000,000
New York U. $104,254,314 6 40 261 42 30 $310,699,000
Wake Forest U. $90,005,640 2 11 N/A N/A 10 $148,686,377
Massachusetts
Institute of
Technology
$88,924,500 20 98 818 282 140 $1,319,000,000
U. of Minnesota $84,669,281 1 63 781 58 37 $583,524,000
U. of Washington,
Washington
Research
Foundation
$80,330,765 9 212 1,122 149 56 $1,026,788,452
U. of Rochester $72,264,249 6 18 99 74 25 $361,602,172
Stanford U. $62,514,524 9 107 956 396 132 $694,217,484
U. of Wisconsin at
Madison, Wisconsin
Alumni Research
Foundation
$54,130,000 6 75 547 144 98 $942,000,000
U. of Florida $52,252,469 14 75 395 180 52 $483,798,009
U. of Massachusetts $35,982,532 2 35 266 66 25 $435,247,000
Mount Sinai School
of Medicine $31,390,804 0 14 89 18 13 $296,379,952
U. of Utah $26,211,372 20 78 224 119 33 $273,005,853
U. of Michigan $25,008,033 13 91 339 132 75 $875,753,507
U. of Georgia $24,128,536 2 130 651 60 33 $350,299,000
U. of Iowa Research
Foundation $23,560,163 0 22 272 36 24 $293,564,000
Wayne State U. $23,554,221 1 8 109 35 7 $249,210,000
Harvard U. $20,980,563 12 56 537 167 55 $660,081,500
California Institute
of Technology $19,220,613 14 57 136 426 N/A N/A
Emory U. $19,096,296 3 24 220 70 3 $390,965,216
Research
Foundation of State
U. of New York
$19,059,356 10 56 469 126 44 $784,324,279
Washington U. in
St. Louis $15,715,818 4 52 462 112 14 $548,351,000
Duke U. $15,591,503 7 96 639 102 32 $678,184,248
Case Western
Reserve U. $13,294,612 1 34 N/A N/A N/A $416,077,000
Texas A&M U.
system $11,787,219 1 41 444 75 28 $582,365,000
U. of Texas at
Austin $11,553,727 10 56 204 74 25 $527,141,322
Johns Hopkins U. $11,362,574 12 92 441 387 45 $1,183,768,000
Baylor College of
Medicine $8,863,000 1 44 534 30 11 $304,225,000
U. of Chicago $8,623,473 0 22 214 58 29 $317,515,531
Iowa State U. $8,580,317 2 57 512 76 27 $251,674,000</p>

8

<p>This summer, my daughter did research at ETH Zurich (not as a student) and when people asked where she was working for the summer, I figured nobody I know has heard of it but in the OP’s link, it is ranked 15th internationally. I knew about how well known it is in Europe from my D but it is interesting to see it there since anyone I have mentioned to had no idea what school I meant. </p>

<p>In that ranking, they have UC-Santa Barbara quite high and I had no idea it had that sort of reputation.</p>

9

<p>Most academics in science and engineering have heard of ETHZ. They’ve had a lot of Nobel prize winners over the years. Swiss Federal Institute of Techology might work better. Or just say its the “MIT of Switzerland”, or Einstein went there.</p>

<p>What a wonderful experience for your daughter, soozievt!</p>

10

<p>

</p>

<p>If I’m reading this chart correctly, NU’s licensing income is many times most of the others on the list, and 40 x that of Harvard. I’m guessing most of this is due to Lyrica, which has been an incredible windfall for them.</p>

<p><a href=“http://blogs.wsj.com/health/2007/08/17/lyrica-makes-rain-at-northwestern/[/url]”>http://blogs.wsj.com/health/2007/08/17/lyrica-makes-rain-at-northwestern/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

11

<p>This is my favorite ranking site [College</a> Ranking Service, A Peerless Evaluation of Colleges, rankyourcollege.com](<a href=“http://www.rankyourcollege.com/ddmethod.html]College”>College Ranking Service, A Peerless Evaluation of Colleges, rankyourcollege.com)
Click on the “classic” and “fairness” rankings, and if you don’t like the order of the rankings, just refresh the page, and they change! Read their disclaimer. It is amusing. Read their press release. It is spot on</p>

12

<p>If I were an adcom and knew that a student had created this, I’d let that kid in immediately. What a clever idea!</p>

<p>I particularly like this:

</p>

13

<p>

Looks like one category announced per week.</p>

<p>New NRC ratings are supposed to be available later this month too…</p>

14

<p>PG-
It was created by a now retired Duke professor, who was on sabattical at Stanford when he put the website up <a href=“http://www.stuartr.com/[/url]”>http://www.stuartr.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>The grade inflation data is also interesting-- look at the third graph-- long term inflation by institution <a href=“http://www.gradeinflation.com/[/url]”>http://www.gradeinflation.com/&lt;/a&gt; and the “sweet 16” of grade inflators </p>

<p><a href=“http://www.gradeinflation.com/sweet162010.html[/url]”>http://www.gradeinflation.com/sweet162010.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

15

<p>motherbear wrote:

</p>

<p>Yeah, when people asked what she was doing all summer and I said doing research in architecture at ETH Zurich, I then just said, “It’s like the MIT of Europe.” It is renown in Europe, not just Switzerland. This description also dovetailed with the fact that D had been at MIT for grad school the past two years and so it was a convenient way to describe what ETH is.</p>

16

<p>I believe NU sold the rights in one big one-time deal worth $700 Million cash which is reflected in that big number. It won’t continue getting that level going forward.</p>

<p>[NWU</a> ?Hedges Bet? by Selling $700M Chunk Of Future Royalties from Pfizer Pain Drug | Biotech Transfer Week | Biotechtransferweek | GenomeWeb](<a href=“http://www.genomeweb.com/biotechtransferweek/nwu-‘hedges-bet’-selling-700m-chunk-future-royalties-pfizer-pain-drug]NWU”>NWU ‘Hedges Bet’ by Selling $700M Chunk Of Future Royalties from Pfizer Pain Drug)</p>

17

<p>$700 million for treatment of hypochondriac’s disease…wow…</p>

18

<p>Kent State?! (“Can’t Read? Can’t Write? Kent State!”) LOL</p>