University Times

Pitt dropped from No. 114 to No. 119 among the top 200 universities worldwide that were ranked in the Times Higher-QS World University Rankings 2010, the latest edition of the ranking by the Times Higher Education Supplement (THES) and Quacquarelli Symonds.

THES is a London-based independent newspaper that reports specifically on higher education issues, and Quacquarelli Symonds is a global company that provides educational/career information and networking. The publication has ranked universities worldwide since 2004.

Other Pennsylvania institutions that made the list were Penn at No. 12 (also 12th in 2009); Carnegie Mellon at No. 34 (down from 27th last year), and Penn State at No. 98 (up from 120th last year).

The University of Cambridge, U.K., replaced Harvard at the top of this year’s rankings, followed by Harvard at No. 2, Yale, University College London and MIT.

Among the 53 U.S. institutions that appear on the top 200 list, Pitt fell from 37th to 39th.

Despite the fact that 12 of the top 15 institutions on the list are U.S. institutions, Pitt’s drop reflected a trend among U.S. universities listed, THES editors stated.

According to the higher ed supplement, “The U.S. remains the dominant force in higher education, but the 2010 rankings show the balance of power is shifting to some extent, with leading institutions in the U.K., Germany and Switzerland, in particular, improving their positions. There are 53 U.S. universities in the top 200, compared with 58 two years ago. Many U.S. universities are feeling the effects of budget cuts and sharp drops in their endowment. Similar or more serious constraints are on the way in the U.K. and it remains to be seen whether the leading universities can remain as competitive.” In this year’s top 15, the three non-U.S. schools all were in the United Kingdom.

The rankings represent a composite of quality indicator scores obtained through surveys.

Some 5,000 employers and more than 15,000 academicians and university administrators from around the world offered their opinions on the top universities for the latest QS World University Rankings.

In addition, the universities also were judged on quantitative data on research citations, staffing levels and international activity.

The quality indicators were weighted as follows: academic peer review, 40 percent of the total score; employer/recruiter review, 20 percent; citations per faculty member, 20 percent; student-faculty ratio, 10 percent, and international factors (the proportion of international students and of international faculty who are attracted to that institution), 5 percent each.

The rankings focus on three main characteristics of a university: size (based on the number of full-time-equivalent degree-seeking students); scope (based on the institution’s programs in arts and humanities; engineering and IT; life sciences and biomedicine; natural sciences, and social sciences), and research intensiveness (based on the number of documents published in the last five years retrievable from Scopus, a database of abstracts and citations in scholarly journals).

The supplement also provides separate tables for the subject groupings covered under the scope of an institution’s offerings. This year, Pitt ranked 99th in arts and sciences programs (up from 120th last year); 231st in engineering and IT (down from 218th); 238th in life sciences and biomedicine (down from 148th), and 213th in social sciences (up from 224th).

The University was unranked in the natural sciences category both this year and last.

The complete lists are available at www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings.

—Peter Hart