Some more rankings

For some reason I have this irrational love of statistics. It could be due to the fact that as a microscopist I am very weary of qualitative data ... it's easy to see what you want to see. Quantification is the attempt to provide a more objective assessment of the world.

This fascination of statistics could also stem from the fact that as a kid growing up in North America, you are bombarded with numbers. From sports (who scored the most goals for the Canadiens in 1983?), to the Almanac with all of it's lists, to pop culture (I can hear Casey Kasem now "and the top song of the week is..."), our culture is saturated in numbers.

So while I was in Montreal there was a big hullabaloo over the rankings of Universities world wide. Unlike the last ranking I wrote about ("Best Places to Work in 2006: Academia" from The Scientist") this report is for the overall gestalt of the academic institution and is compiled by The London Times.

Now people back home were happy - McGill university was ranked 21st in the world. I downloaded the complete list of the 200 "best" and just browsed to see if there was anything interesting. Here are some tidbits:

- Not surprisingly, American Universities dominated the list.
- Australian Universities did very well.
- Beijing University is #14? I would not have guessed that. (For comparison, it's listed ahead of any Japanesse University!)
- Where are the German and Italian universities???? The top German university listed was Heidelberg at position 58, and the top Italian University was La Sapienza University, Rome at #197. Pitiful. In comparison there were two Canadian (McGill, University of Toronto #27), two French (Ecole Normale Superieure #18, Ecole Polytechnique #37) and two Swiss (ETH Zurich #24, Geneva University #39) institutes in the top 50.

Now of course there are other rankings (for example one compiled by Shanghai Jiao Tong University's Institute of Higher Education) but there again German and Italian universities are underrepresented. We spend a lot of time dissing the American educational system (just read this OpEd from today's NYTimes), but I must say that at the college level, the top American Universities are doing their job including many of the public schools (the UC schools, University of Michigan, University of Wisconsin and University of Washington just to name a few). Now these rankings are never as objective as we would like, but if I were German or Italian, I would worry.

Since the list will not be up forever, here are the rankings:

1Harvard University
2Cambridge University
3Oxford University
4=Massachusetts Institute of Technology
4=Yale University
6Stanford University
7California Institute of Technology
8University of California, Berkeley
9Imperial College London
10Princeton University
11University of Chicago
12Columbia University
13Duke University
14Beijing University
15Cornell University
16Australian National University
17London School of Economics
18Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris
19=National University of Singapore
19=Tokyo University
21McGill University
22Melbourne University 
23Johns Hopkins University
24ETH Zurich
25University College London
26Pennsylvania University
27University of Toronto
28Tsing Hua University
29=Kyoto University
29=University of Michigan
31University of California, Los Angeles
32University of Texas at Austin
33=Edinburgh University
33=University of Hong Kong
35=Carnegie Mellon University
35=Sydney University
37Ecole Polytechnique
38Monash University
39Geneva University
40Manchester University
41University of New South Wales
42Northwestern University
43New York University
44University of California, San Diego
45Queensland University
46=Auckland University
46=King's College London
48=Rochester University
48=Washington University, St Louis
50=University of British Columbia
50=Chinese University of Hong Kong
52Sciences Po
53Vanderbilt University
54=Brown University
54=Copenhagen University
56Emory University
57Indian Institutes of Technology
58=Heidelberg University
58=Hong Kong University Sci & Technol
60Case Western Reserve University
61=Dartmouth College
61=Nanyang Technological University
63Seoul National University
64=Bristol University
64=Ecole Polytech Fédérale de Lausanne
66Boston University
67Eindhoven University of Technology
68Indian Institutes of Management
69Amsterdam University
70=School of Oriental and African Studies
70=Osaka University
72Ecole Normale Supérieure, Lyon
73Warwick University
74National Autonomous Univ of Mexico
75Basel University
76Catholic University of Louvain (French)
77University of Illinois
78Trinity College Dublin
79=  Otago University
79=University of Wisconsin
81Glasgow University
82=Macquarie University
82=Technical University Munich
84Washington University
85Nottingham University
86Delft University of Technology
87Vienna University
88Pittsburgh University
89Lausanne University
90=Birmingham University
90=Leiden University
92Erasmus University Rotterdam
93=Lomonosov Moscow State University
93=Pierre and Marie Curie University
95Utrecht University
96Catholic University of Leuven (Flemish)
97Wageningen University
98Munich University
99=Queen Mary, University of London
99=Pennsylvania State University
101University of Southern California
102=Georgetown University
102=Rice University
102=Sheffield University
105=University of Adelaide
105=Humboldt University Berlin
105=Sussex University
108National Taiwan University
109=St Andrews University
109=Zurich University
111=Maryland University
111=Uppsala University
111=Wake Forest University
111=University of Western Australia
115University of Twente
116=Fudan University
116=Helsinki University
118Tokyo Institute of Technology
119Hebrew University of Jerusalem
120Keio University
121Leeds University
122Lund University
123University of North Carolina
124=University of Massachusetts Amherst
124=York University
126Aarhus University
127Purdue University
128=Kyushu University
128=Nagoya University
130=Tufts University
130=Virginia University
132Durham University
133=University of Alberta
133=Brussels Free University (Flemish)
133=Hokkaido University
133=Newcastle upon Tyne University
137Nijmegen University
138Vienna Technical University
139Liverpool University
140Cranfield University
141=University of California, Santa Barbara
141=Cardiff University
141=Ghent University
141=Southampton University
145Georgia Institute of Technology
146RMIT University
147=Chalmers University of Technology
147=Tel Aviv University
148Free University Berlin
150=Korea University
150=Texas A&M University
152Notre Dame University 
153Bath University
154City University of Hong Kong
155McMaster University
156=Curtin University of Technology
156=Göttingen University
158=Technion -- Israel Inst of Technology
158=University of Ulm
158=Waseda University
161=Chulalongkorn University
161=University Louis Pasteur Strasbourg
163Michigan State University
164Saint Petersburg State University
165=Brussels Free University (French)
165=China University of Sci & Technol 
165=State Univ of New York, Stony Brook
168=George Washington University
168=Tohoku University
170=University of California, Davis
170=University of Tubingen
172=Aachen RWT 
172=Maastricht University
172=Royal Institute of Technology
172=Yeshiva University
176Queen's University
177Oslo University
178University of Bern
179Shanghai Jiao Tong University
180Nanjing University
181=Kobe University
181=Université de Montréal
183=Jawaharlal Nehru University
183=Free University of Amsterdam
185University of Kebangsaan Malaysia
186Innsbruck University
187=Brandeis University
187=Frankfurt University
187=University of Minnesota
190=University of Barcelona
190=Reading University
192=Malaya University
192=Queensland University of Technology
194Technical University of Denmark
195Aberdeen University
196University of Wollongong
197La Sapienza University, Rome
198=University of California, Irvine
198=Korea Advanced Inst Science & Technol
200University of Paris-Sorbonne (Paris IV)

Data compiled for The Times Higher by QS and Evidence Ltd, published October 06 2006.