The World's Top Universities 2014

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1. California Institute of Technology

United States
2013 rank: 1

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The California Institute of Technology, a private institution with just 2,200 students in Pasadena, CA, takes the number one slot again this year in the 11th annual World University Rankings, put out by Times Higher Education (THE), a London magazine that tracks the higher ed market. Three years ago Caltech bumped Harvard out of first place. Harvard comes in second this year, followed by the University of Oxford in the UK and then Stanford. See our slideshow above for the top 10 schools and click through the THE link above to get a list of all 400 schools it ranks.

Unlike Forbes’ own ranking or the much-read U.S. News & World Report list, both of which measure only US schools, THE casts its net around the world. THE also emphasizes global scholarship and reputation and does not consider things like entry requirements, graduation rates, professor ratings by students or alumni salaries. “We put the heaviest weight on research and innovation, research productivity and research excellence,” explains THE rankings editor Phil Baty. “Our list is really about producing new ideas, about innovating, about attracting skills and talented people into a country,” he adds. “It’s also about bringing business money into the higher education center.”THE also gives a lot of weight to the universities’ efficacy as graduate institutions, weighing things like the number of doctorates an institution awards and it puts a lot value on the extent to which its top scholars teach and mentor undergraduates. THEconsiders only universities, not colleges.

We think THE’s rankings are worth a story in part because both universities and governments are taking them seriously. Baty says that the Japanese government has tapped the rankings to plan the prime minister’s growth strategy and the Russian and Indian governments have invited THE staffers to talk about how those countries could make their universities more competitive. Japan has five schools on the top-200 list. Russia had no schools on the list last year but its Lomonosov Moscow State University moved into slot No. 196 this year.

To compile its ranking, THE looked at 13 different metrics to evaluate whether schools are achieving what it deems their core mission: teaching, research, knowledge transfer and what it calls “international outlook.”

Thirty percent of the ranking score comes from citations of a university’s scholarship. Thomson Reuters, which does the data crunching for THE, combed through more than 6 million journal articles published over a six-year period and then calculated how many times those articles were cited by other scholars. Another 30% of the score comes from the volume of institutions’ research, and the reputation and income it generates. While THE also looks at teaching to derive 30% of a school’s score, it does not query students. Rather it examines four things: 1) staff-to-student ratios, 2) the percent of the faculty who have PhDs, 3) survey results from 10,500 academics around the world who answered questions about the best departments in their disciplines, specialists in their fields and where they would recommend their graduates go for further study, 4) total income of the university per faculty member.  THE also tallied survey results from 10,500 academics around the world, who answered questions about the best departments in their disciplines, specialists in their fields, and where they would recommend their graduates go for further study. To measure international outlook, which counts for 7.5% of the score, THE looks at diversity on campus and to what degree academics collaborate with international colleagues on research.  What is the ratio of international to domestic students and of local professors to international faculty? ForTHE’s complete methodology, click here.

Baty says that American and British universities dominate the top of the list, and universities in Asia and elsewhere look to emulate them, because the US and UK schools have found a way to mix their top research scholars with their undergraduates. “They’ve managed to combine excellence in research with teaching,” says Baty. “There’s genuine pursuit of new knowledge with students as active participants.” Universities elsewhere tend to have a more fractured structure where research and teaching take place in two separate institutions, says Baty.

Caltech landed at No. 1 because it scored well across the board. Baty says he visited last year and was impressed when he saw freshmen in labs “taking part in research right under the nose of superstar professors.” The school’s small faculty of 300 professors and 600 “research scholars” has won 32 Nobel prizes. Caltech also manages the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the federally funded NASA research and development center. While this doesn’t affect the rankings, Caltech has gotten some attention as a home to nerds with a sense of humor because the hit sitcom “Big Bang Theory” is set there.

The top of the list hasn’t shifted much since last year. Yale moved into a tie for 9th place with Imperial College London, from 11th place last year while University of Chicago dropped out of the top 10, sliding to 11th from 9thplace. But Baty says the changes at the two schools were minimal. “At this end of the list it’s a little like Olympic swimming where the difference between three, four and five can be like a fingertip touching a split second before the next one.” Yale had an uptick in research impact and Chicago had a slightly lower score for teaching and research impact. “It’s very very marginal,” says Baty.

One piece of bad news for American schools: After regaining their footing last year, public universities have declined again, due to budget cuts coming from reduced state funding. University of Illinois at Chicago, University of Texas, Penn State, Ohio State and University of Pittsburgh all declined this year. “These schools are suffering a brain drain because of restricted funding.”

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