Caltech Named World’s Top University For Fifth Year In A Row

Caltech has been named the world’s top university for the fifth year in a row.

The Times Higher Education magazine of Great Britain rated Caltech the best research university in the world in a report released on Wednesday, September 30. According to the Los Angeles Times, the rankings are based on a variety of factors, including income from research, the amount of scholarly publications, and how international the student bodies and faculties are.

Caltech President Thomas F. Rosenbaum said in a statement on Wednesday that the rankings represent the school’s strengths in “venturing into unexplored realms, defining new fields in science and engineering, and pushing interdisciplinary boundaries in the service of discovery. It also points to the competitive nature of higher education, where maintaining a culture of intellectual risk taking is essential to attract the most creative and original scholars, scholars who have choices among many exceptional academic institutions across the world.”

Three other California universities made it into the top 20. Stanford, ranked third, UC Berkeley ranked 13th, and UCLA ranked 16th. Overall, institutions from 70 different countries, which is 29 more than last year, are featured in the rankings for 2015-2016. Countries including Indonesia, Bangladesh, and Kenya are being represented for the first time in the list. The complete list contains 800 world-class universities.

Below is the list of the top 50 universities in the world (= means the universities tied):

1. California Institute of Technology, US
2. University of Oxford, UK
3. Stanford University, US
4. University of Cambridge, UK
5. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, US
6. Harvard University, US
7. Princeton University, US
8. Imperial College London, UK
9. ETH Zürich – Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich, Switzerland
10. University of Chicago, US
11. Johns Hopkins University, US
12. Yale University, US
13. University of California, Berkeley, US
14. University College London, UK
15. Columbia University, US
16. University of California, Los Angeles, US
17. University of Pennsylvania, US
18. Cornell University, US
19. University of Toronto, Canada
20. Duke University, US

21. University of Michigan, US
22. Carnegie Mellon University, US
23. London School of Economics and Political Science, UK
24. University of Edinburgh, UK
25. Northwestern University, US
26. National University of Singapore, Singapore
27. King’s College London, UK
28. Karolinska Institute, Sweden
29. LMU Munich, Germany
30. New York University US
31. École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland
32. University of Washington, US
33. University of Melbourne, Australia
34. University of British Columbia, Canada
35. KU Leuven, Belgium
36. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, US
37. Heidelberg University, Germany
38. McGill University, Canada
=39. University of California, San Diego, US
=39. University of California, Santa Barbara, US
41. Georgia Institute of Technology, US

42. Peking University, China
43. University of Tokyo, Japan
=44. University of California, Davis, US
=44. University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
46. University of Texas at Austin, US
=47. Tsinghua University, China
=47. Wageningen University and Research Center, Netherlands
49. Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany
50. University of Wisconsin-Madison, US

The United States still dominates the rankings with 63 institutions among the top 200. However, that number dropped from 74 last year.

“The U.S. will have to raise its game to ensure its dominance does not erode,” said Phil Baty, editor of the Times Higher Education World University Rankings, adding that countries like China, Germany, and the Netherlands are rising on the list due to their heavy investments in universities there.

“Many of the country’s European rivals, such as Germany, Switzerland and the Netherlands, are also performing well, but are less hindered by funding cuts and more welcoming for international students,” he said, adding that the UK will also need to work extra hard to ensure their spots on the list.

“The UK will have to work hard to ensure its higher education spending and immigration policies do not hinder its place in the World University Rankings,” Baty added.

[Photo by Ken Wolter / Shutterstock.com]