GLOBAL: Harvard resumes top spot in THE ranking

The latest world ranking of universities by the UK's Times Higher Education magazine has placed Harvard back on top, following its displacement to second spot for the first time since 2004 in last week's QS World University Rankings.

As it does in most rankings, the US dominates the new THE ratings with five of its universities leading the top 10, 52 in the first 100 and 72 in the top 200. The QS league table had 53 US universities in its top 200

The THE list was published this week for the first time following the magazine's split from QS last year and its new partnership with Thompson Reuters, its specialist data supplier.

According to the magazine, the UK came second with 29 of its universities in the top 200 although only five in the top 50. Although Cambridge pushed Harvard aside in the QS rankings, it came sixth with Oxford in the THE list, yet it has never been rated lower than third in the previous ratings and was runner-up in 2006, 2007 and 2009.

Under the THE's points-based aggregate score system, Germany won third place with 14 of its universities in the top 200, less than half that of the UK. Canada came fourth with nine, The Netherlands fifth with 10, and Australia sixth with seven.

Asian institutions make up an eighth of the top 200, with a total of 25 that included six in China, five in Japan, four in Hong Kong, South Korea and Taiwan, and two in Singapore.

The magazine says its methodology is now designed "to emphasise evidence about research, teaching and knowledge transfer". The new rankings methodology is based on 13 indicators "designed to capture a broad range of activities, from teaching and research to knowledge transfer.

"Two indicators use the results from a worldwide survey of academics conducted by Ipsos MediaCT, which is bigger and more representative than ever before," the magazine says. "However, subjective views carry less weight in the new system, counting for 34.5% of total scores rather than the 50% under the old system. The 2010 methodology is less heavily weighted towards subjective assessments of reputation and uses more robust citation measures."

QS says its criteria includes measures of research quality, graduate employability, teaching commitment and international commitment, using a combination of global surveys and audited data, including citation counts.

Although the THE says the UK faces a "reality check" because of the way its universities have been pushed out of the top 50, it notes that Britain remains a clear second to the US "and well ahead of the rest of the pack".

Last month's Shanghai Jiao Tong Academic Ranking of World Universities used a different system to the THE and QS systems but nevertheless placed American universities in all but three of the top 20 spots with Harvard, the University of California at Berkeley and Stanford in first, second and third spot, and the universities of Cambridge, Oxford and Tokyo the only outsiders at fifth, 10th and 20th respectively.

Jonathan Adams, director of research evaluation at Thomson Reuters, told the THE that people will recognise that the reshaped basket of indicators THE is using include funding as an important element at a number of points.

"The relative funding of higher education institutions in the US and the UK ultimately influences some of the changes in ranking. This reflects the relatively fragile funding position of some of the leading UK institutions."

In the THE scaling, universities in the top 200 are given a score in each of the 13 separate performance indicators and these are brought together to give a final overall ranking score for each institution which the magazine describes as "a cumulative probability score". In a list of the top 200, it aggregates the overall ranking scores for each institution.

The table also includes OECD figures for the proportion of Gross Domestic Product each country allocates to higher education. The US also dominates this list with 3.1% of GDP given over to higher education, followed by Canada with 2.6% and South Korea with 2.4 %. Britain allocates only 1.1% which, at least in part, may explain its relatively poor showing in the top 50.

The magazine also provides rankings of universities according to region and discipline. Of these, life sciences will be available on 30 September, clinical, pre-clinical and health on 7 October, physical sciences on 14 October, social sciences on 21 October and arts and humanities on 28 October.

The THE says it obtained input from "more than 50 leading figures in the sector from 15 countries across every continent, and through 10 months of extensive consultation".

"We believe we have created the gold standard in international university performance comparisons," it says.

Compilers of other rankings, of course, may not agree.