Caltech beats out Harvard for top ranking

(PhysOrg.com) -- According to the Times Higher Education World University Rankings, California Institute of Technology, or Caltech, has beaten out Harvard to take the top spot for the first time since they started this ranking system.

This ranking system looks at universities based on five categories: citations, industry income, international outlook, teaching and research. In order to collect information, over 17,500 academics were surveyed and 50 million citations were analyzed.

While Harvard was on top when you look at teaching, but Caltech placed higher in research funding with a 16% increase which brought them just slightly over the top to take the first place rank. The editor of Times Higher Education World University Rankings Phil Baty says that the differences between the top universities are small and in the long run money is what plays a decisive role.

In the complete list, 75 American schools made the top 200, with 50 being in the top 100 and seven of the top 10. After Caltech’s top place, Harvard and Stanford tied for the second place spot and were followed by the University of Oxford, Princeton University, the University of Cambridge, MIT, Imperial College of London, the University of Chicago and UC Berkeley.

THE WORLD UNIVERSITY RANKINGS 2011-2012 (TOP 20):

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