University Times

Pitt was ranked No. 116 — up from No. 119 last year — on the latest edition of the QS World University Rankings, which lists the top 300 universities worldwide.

The QS (Quacquarelli Symonds) rankings are an offshoot of annual rankings published jointly with the Times Higher Education supplement in 2004-09. QS uses the same methodology as the earlier joint rankings, while the Times Higher Education supplement now publishes a list based on methodology developed with Thomson Reuters.

According to Quacquarelli Symonds, a company specializing in education and study abroad, the QS World University Rankings are based in the main on factors drawn from two global surveys.

Some 16,000 employers and more than 33,000 academicians and university administrators from around the world contributed their opinions on the top universities for the latest rankings, according to QS.

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

The rankings methodology employs six quality indicators 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); subject range (based on the institution’s programs in arts and humanities; engineering and IT; life sciences; natural sciences, and social sciences), and research activity level (based on the number of documents published in the last five years retrievable from Scopus, a database of abstracts and citations in scholarly journals).

For the 2011-12 rankings, QS added as a factor “the influence of institutional age on development trajectory and performance in international evaluations,” which the company stated contributed to an institution’s reputation.

In addition to Pitt, Pennsylvania institutions that made the list of 300 were Penn at No. 9 (up from 12th in 2010); Carnegie Mellon at No. 43 (down from 34th last year), and Penn State at No. 94 (up from 98th last year).

The University of Cambridge, U.K., retained its spot at the top of this year’s rankings, followed by Harvard, MIT, Yale and the University of Oxford, U.K.

U.S. institutions occupied 13 of the top 20 places, 31 of the top 100 and 53 of the top 200. Pitt ranked 38th among all U.S. institutions ranked, up one spot from last year.

The QS rankings also provide separate tables for the subject groupings covered under the scope of an institution’s offerings. This year, Pitt ranked No. 121 in arts and humanities programs (down from 99 last year); No. 335 in engineering and IT (down from 231), and No. 133 in life sciences (up from 238).

The University was unranked in the natural sciences and social sciences categories.

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

—Peter Hart