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U.S. Universities Slip In An Influential World Ranking

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Although the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) continues to be rated the world’s best university, several other prominent U.S. institutions saw their rankings fall in the just-released 2022 edition of the QS Quancquarelli World University Rankings.

It’s the 18th edition of the rankings by QS, the London-based company that specializes in analysis of global higher education and rankings of different types of academic programs. According to the company, its ranking website was viewed 147 million times in 2020.

Among the indicators that U.S. universities took a tumble in the rankings:

  • Harvard fell to 5th place, its lowest rank ever.
  • The California Institute of Technology dropped to 6th, the first time it’s been out of the top five since 2015.
  • For only the second time since the QS rankings were published, Cornell fell out of the top 20.
  • Duke University moved down to 52nd place, marking only the second time in the history of the rankings that it’s not attained a place in the top 50.
  • Fewer than half of the top 20 universities were American institutions.
  • Of the 177 American universities ranked by QS for 2022, 91 declined in rank (51.4%) while only 29 improved their position (16.4%) from a year ago.
  • By contrast, several universities in Asia and Australia showed gains.

The QS Top-20

1. For the tenth year in a row, MIT claimed the top spot. Commenting on the ranking, L. Rafael Reif, President of MIT, said: “We deeply appreciate the recognition of our institution and the faculty, staff, alumni, and students that make MIT what it is – and we also tremendously admire the achievements of academic institutions around the globe...We are proud and grateful to belong to this great human community of scholars, researchers and educators, striving together to make a better world.”

The rest of the top ten were:

2. University of Oxford

3. Stanford University tied with University of Cambridge

5. Harvard University

6. California Institute of Technology

7. Imperial College London

8. ETH Zurich (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology) tied with University College London

10. University of Chicago

11. National University of Singapore

12. Nanyang Technological University

13. University of Pennsylvania

14. Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne tied with Yale University

16. University of Edinburgh

17. Tsinghua University

18. Peking University

19. Columbia University

20. Princeton University

The QS Methodology

QS uses six differentially weighted indicators in its ranking system:

  1. Academic Reputation (40%): based on a survey of over 100,000 academics.
  2. Employer Reputation (10%): based on a survey from nearly 50,000 employers about the relationship between institution and graduate employability.
  3. Citations per Faculty (20%): a measure of research impact, calculated by dividing the total number of citations of a university’s research papers over a five-year period by the number of faculty at the institution.
  4. Faculty/Student Ratio (20%): the number of students divided by the number of faculty members, giving some indication of likely class sizes at the institution.
  5. International Faculty Ratio (5%): the proportion of non-domestic faculty at an institution.
  6. International Student Ratio (5%): the proportion of non-domestic students at an institution, providing an indication of a university’s ability to attract talent from across the world.

Further methodological information is available here. The full rankings can be found at www.TopUniversities.com.

Speculation will now turn to what’s responsible for the apparent erosion in the world standing of major U.S. universities. Have their reputations been tarnished by scandals such as Operation Varsity Blues, which exposed the seamy side of college admissions in several of America’s most prominent universities? Are campus culture wars - covered extensively in the press - taking a toll on how the nation’s elite campuses are viewed? Did the anti-immigrant rhetoric and policies of the Trump administration strip away some of the international esteem that American colleges have enjoyed for years? Are international students beginning to avoid U.S. universities in favor of other options?

With reputation - a factor of questionable reliability - given the greatest weight of any of QS’s six factors, the cumulative impact of several of the above problems may be responsible for the numerous declines in the rankings of American institutions.

Whatever the cause, for those who care about rankings and ratings, the latest QS results provide evidence of some slippage in the prominence that U.S. higher education has long enjoyed. Whether that decline is a short-term phenomenon or will persist and whether it will be confirmed in other rankings remain to be seen.

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