California"s Caltech No 1 University in the United States

US and British institutions once again dominate an annual worldwide league table of universities published today, but there is a fresh name at the top, unseating long-time leader Harvard.

California Institute of Technology is ranked as the world’s top university, knocking Harvard University out of the number one spot for the first time in eight years.

The Times Higher Education (THE) World University Rankings of the top universities across the globe employ 13 separate performance indicators designed to capture the full range of university activities, from teaching to research to knowledge transfer. These 13 elements are brought together into five headline categories, which are:

• Teaching — the learning environment (worth 30 per cent of the overall ranking score)
• Research — volume, income and reputation (worth 30 per cent)
• Citations — research influence (worth 30 per cent)
• Industry income — innovation (worth 2.5 per cent)
• International outlook — staff, students and research (worth 7.5 per cent).

Harvard University lost its top seat in annual global university rankings released Thursday by the Times Higher Education magazine. Harvard was nudged off the pinnacle by the California Institute of Technology in the British magazine’s eighth World University Rankings, tying with Stanford University for second place while the University of Oxford came fourth.

THE attributed Caltech’s success to “consistent results across the indicators and a steep rise in research funding”. Caltech specialises in science and engineering and has its main campus a short distance north of Los Angeles.

“Caltech is fortunate to have steadfast donors and partners whose support gives Caltech the ability to invest in new ideas long before they would be eligible for public funding opportunities,” Dr. Jean-Lou Chameau, president of Caltech, said in an e-mailed statement. “This public-private partnership model enables our research funds to go further.”

365-year-old Harvard, which once again loses the top spot for the  since THE began publishing a global university ranking, shares second place with Californian university Stanford.

There was change at the top in Britain also where Oxford sneaked into fourth spot, overtaking Cambridge, which slipped to sixth. The turnabout can be put down to a greater emphasis being put on the arts, humanities and social sciences in this year’s study, THE explained.

The top 10 places are mainly occupied by US universities, including Princeton, Berkeley and Chicago. 

Top 20 World University Rankings 2011-12:
Institution Country
1. California Institute of Technology U.S.
2. Harvard University U.S.
2. Stanford University U.S.
4. University of Oxford U.K.
5. Princeton University U.S.
6. University of Cambridge U.K.
7. Massachusetts Institute of Technology U.S.
8. Imperial College London U.K.
9. University of Chicago U.S.
10. University of California, Berkeley U.S.
11. Yale University U.S.
12. Columbia University U.S.
13. University of California, Los Angeles U.S.
14. ETH Zurich Switzerland
15. Johns Hopkins University U.S.
16. University of Pennsylvania U.S.
17. University College London U.K.
18. University of Michigan U.S.
19. University of Toronto Canada
20. Cornell University U.S.