Top World Universities by Reputation - 2013

[Irish Houstonian]

Top universities by reputation 2013

This is just academic rankings, but thought it interesting.

The 2013 rankings are based on a survey carried out in March and April 2012, which received 16,639 responses from 144 countries. When polled, the respondents on average had been working in the academy for 17 years.

Top 25

1 Harvard University United States 100.0
2 Massachusetts Institute of Technology United States 87.6
3 University of Cambridge United Kingdom 81.3
4 University of Oxford United Kingdom 73.0
5 University of California, Berkeley United States 72.4
6 Stanford University United States 70.6
7 Princeton University United States 36.2
8 University of California, Los Angeles United States 35.6
9 University of Tokyo Japan 32.9
10 Yale University United States 32.8
11 California Institute of Technology United States 27.8
12 University of Michigan United States 22.4
13 Columbia University United States 21.4
14 University of Chicago United States 21.3
14 Imperial College London United Kingdom 21.3
16 University of Toronto Canada 18.8
17 Cornell University United States 18.3
18 University of Pennsylvania United States 17.9
19 Johns Hopkins University United States 16.9
20 University College London United Kingdom 15.8
20 ETH Zürich – Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zürich Switzerland 15.8
22 National University of Singapore Singapore 15.5
23 Kyoto University Japan 15.0
24 University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign United States 14.3
25 London School of Economics and Political Science United Kingdom 12.1

 

[Rack Em]

Top universities by reputation 2013

This is just academic rankings, but thought it interesting.



Top 25

1 Harvard University United States 100.0
2 Massachusetts Institute of Technology United States 87.6
3 University of Cambridge United Kingdom 81.3
4 University of Oxford United Kingdom 73.0
5 University of California, Berkeley United States 72.4
6 Stanford University United States 70.6
7 Princeton University United States 36.2
8 University of California, Los Angeles United States 35.6
9 University of Tokyo Japan 32.9
10 Yale University United States 32.8
11 California Institute of Technology United States 27.8
12 University of Michigan United States 22.4
13 Columbia University United States 21.4
14 University of Chicago United States 21.3
14 Imperial College London United Kingdom 21.3
16 University of Toronto Canada 18.8
17 Cornell University United States 18.3
18 University of Pennsylvania United States 17.9
19 Johns Hopkins University United States 16.9
20 University College London United Kingdom 15.8
20 ETH Zürich – Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zürich Switzerland 15.8
22 National University of Singapore Singapore 15.5
23 Kyoto University Japan 15.0
24 University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign United States 14.3
25 London School of Economics and Political Science United Kingdom 12.1

I'm sorry, but what?

 

[Irish Insanity]

Top universities by reputation 2013




12 University of Michigan United States 22.4

lol

 

[Irish Houstonian]

^You have to think that large schools sending many grads into academia will have a natural advantage, since everyone's always higher-than-normal on their alma mater.

 

[BeauBenken]

After Stanford it all drops dramatically. That seems odd.

70.6 to 36.2

 

[Whiskeyjack]

This popularity poll has a serious bias toward large research institutions (which is what you get when you only survey academics). This might be useful to someone who aspires to work in academia, but for anyone else, it's of questionable value.

I truly hate these types of surveys. Somewhere, a Walmart Wolverine is tweeting this at a football recruit with, "ND for academics? LOL Not even top 100! GO BLUE"

 

[IrishLax]

This is why in the US News & WR poll Notre Dame is "only" 17.... the "peer survey" which is a subjective popularity poll always has ND reallllllllllly low. Like not even in the top 50. And this counts for 20% of the score. On objective metrics ND is somewhere in the 10-13 range.

Why is this? 1. Anti-Catholicism 2. Implicit factors in favor of state schools 3. ND specific "haters"

It's stupid. In terms of job placement, degree value, graduation rate, student:faculty ratio, etc. ND is always in the very top group. That's all that really matters. And any poll that thinks Michigan > Chicago as a strictly ACADEMIC institution or that Illinois > Duke or Northwestern has ZERO credibility.

 

[PraetorianND]

Texas A&M, Ohio State, and Michigan State > Notre Dame? False.

 

[Fbolt]

Maryland made the list.

 

[autry_denson]

this is a survey of academics, i.e. researchers, about research universities. despite a few surprises (Urbana must have a few really good programs, but overall it's not a top research university), the list is pretty close to what i'd predict. ND is a great undergrad institution, and has some excellent professional schools, but is not a top tier research university by any standard. And Michigan is one of the best research universities in the world, with top doctoral programs in a wide range of fields--this has little or no bearing on quality of undergrad education, but it's also silly to argue that ND should be anywhere close to any of the top schools on the list.

 

[Bluto]

Dadgummit...shoulda gone to Cal!

 

[Old Man Mike]

Well folks, here's an old academic's view of this: these ratings are sometimes made by polling the intelligentsia and sometimes by doing certain statistics about publication citations, federal research grants, professionals graduated from med, law, grad school etc. All that stuff has ALWAYS shown these same institutions in roughly this order. There is no "anti-Catholic" bias in here, there is, instead, an overwhelming post-undergrad research and publications "in the best journals" bias.

This is a grad school based "reputation", not an undergrad one, whether it's labelled as such or not. Michigan has always been sky-high on this, and the State of Michigan has always lathered the school's budget so that it could out-rumble nearly anyone on the grad "productivity" level [by the way, this same publications and research orientation is what IMPOVERISHES the undergrad teaching at places like Michigan. Illinois has always been the same way. Same for most of the old Big Ten --- Wisconsin and Minnesota used to be huge].

Profs with ambition at smaller schools cannot be retained by those schools since Michigan will come in with their huge budgets and "buy" them out of there --- this happened several times at Iowa State when I was in Grad school there.

This has nothing to do with excellence in undergrad education. It used to be a joke among us profs --- some universities had X-number of nobel prize winners but a student would be lucky if he/she even saw his oriental lab assistant. The polls/ratings of such nature were often seen as the reverse of quality undergrad education. I could teach the pants off of any of those seldom-seen globe-heads who often lacked even the social intelligence of a ferret.

Rest easy, fans. NDs fine. It has always cared about teaching.

 

[Emcee77]

This popularity poll has a serious bias toward large research institutions (which is what you get when you only survey academics). This might be useful to someone who aspires to work in academia, but for anyone else, it's of questionable value.

I truly hate these types of surveys. Somewhere, a Walmart Wolverine is tweeting this at a football recruit with, "ND for academics? LOL Not even top 100! GO BLUE"

Absolutely, except I would say this poll has no value unless you want to get a sense for which universities are producing the most, best new knowledge. There's nothing wrong with that, I guess, if you find that interesting (personally I find it vaguely so but I'm not sure it's worth the work involved in putting this thing together). The annoying thing is how people will misuse it. I can hear those Walmart Wolverines myself.

 

[IrishLax]

Well folks, here's an old academic's view of this: these ratings are sometimes made by polling the intelligentsia and sometimes by doing certain statistics about publication citations, federal research grants, professionals graduated from med, law, grad school etc. All that stuff has ALWAYS shown these same institutions in roughly this order. There is no "anti-Catholic" bias in here, there is, instead, an overwhelming post-undergrad research and publications "in the best journals" bias.

This is a grad school based "reputation", not an undergrad one, whether it's labelled as such or not. Michigan has always been sky-high on this, and the State of Michigan has always lathered the school's budget so that it could out-rumble nearly anyone on the grad "productivity" level [by the way, this same publications and research orientation is what IMPOVERISHES the undergrad teaching at places like Michigan. Illinois has always been the same way. Same for most of the old Big Ten --- Wisconsin and Minnesota used to be huge].

Profs with ambition at smaller schools cannot be retained by those schools since Michigan will come in with their huge budgets and "buy" them out of there --- this happened several times at Iowa State when I was in Grad school there.

This has nothing to do with excellence in undergrad education. It used to be a joke among us profs --- some universities had X-number of nobel prize winners but a student would be lucky if he/she even saw his oriental lab assistant. The polls/ratings of such nature were often seen as the reverse of quality undergrad education. I could teach the pants off of any of those seldom-seen globe-heads who often lacked even the social intelligence of a ferret.

Rest easy, fans. NDs fine. It has always cared about teaching.

I had assumed this was strictly undergrad. I retract everything I said if this is somehow a combination of undergrad and masters and Ph.D. and research.

What I'm saying about "anti-Catholicism" is 100% true though for the undergrad "peer review"... everything single reputable Catholic school (Notre Dame, Georgetown, BC, etc.) has a peer review score VASTLY inferior to their score from all of the other metrics. There is no rational explanation for that correlation besides implicit or explicit anti-Catholicism.

 

[Jerry]

A spin-off of the annual World University Rankings, the reputation league table is based on nothing more than subjective judgement - but it is the considered expert judgement of senior, published academics - the people best placed to know the most about excellence in our universities.

I question how much even the most senior published academic knows about all these universities around the country let alone the world. Sounds like you would pick the obvious ones by reputation (Harvard, MIT, ect) and then favor the handful of universities you are familiar with.

 

[autry_denson]

Well folks, here's an old academic's view of this: these ratings are sometimes made by polling the intelligentsia and sometimes by doing certain statistics about publication citations, federal research grants, professionals graduated from med, law, grad school etc. All that stuff has ALWAYS shown these same institutions in roughly this order. There is no "anti-Catholic" bias in here, there is, instead, an overwhelming post-undergrad research and publications "in the best journals" bias.

This is a grad school based "reputation", not an undergrad one, whether it's labelled as such or not. Michigan has always been sky-high on this, and the State of Michigan has always lathered the school's budget so that it could out-rumble nearly anyone on the grad "productivity" level [by the way, this same publications and research orientation is what IMPOVERISHES the undergrad teaching at places like Michigan. Illinois has always been the same way. Same for most of the old Big Ten --- Wisconsin and Minnesota used to be huge].

Profs with ambition at smaller schools cannot be retained by those schools since Michigan will come in with their huge budgets and "buy" them out of there --- this happened several times at Iowa State when I was in Grad school there.

This has nothing to do with excellence in undergrad education. It used to be a joke among us profs --- some universities had X-number of nobel prize winners but a student would be lucky if he/she even saw his oriental lab assistant. The polls/ratings of such nature were often seen as the reverse of quality undergrad education. I could teach the pants off of any of those seldom-seen globe-heads who often lacked even the social intelligence of a ferret.

Rest easy, fans. NDs fine. It has always cared about teaching.

Very true. There is absolutely zero incentive to do high-quality undergrad teaching in the major research universities. Tenure is based on research alone, with a paragraph thrown in at the end of the tenure statement on teaching and university service for good measure. Faculty are focused on their own research, first, and their graduate students, second. Undergrads are an afterthought in most cases (with some exceptions, meaning both individuals and universities that prioritize undergraduate teaching). Undergrad tuitions subsidize grad students' stipends (~$140k to fund one doctoral student in the social sciences).

All that said, the model of higher ed in both teaching and research institutions is likely to change rapidly, and it has to b/c it's now unsustainable. The emergence of massive online courses are probably the first step in that shift.