There have been significant changes this year in the methodology of the global rankings produced by QS and Times Higher Education.
In addition, there have been some important developments in national rankings, specially the latest edition of America’s Best Colleges published by US News.
For its latest edition US News has introduced several new indicators including four, with a four percent weighting, that measure faculty research productivity. There are also new metrics for the National University rankings relating to graduate earnings and first-generation students.
Five metrics have been removed: alumni donations, class size, students’ high school rank, graduate debt, and faculty with terminal degrees.
The weighting for graduation rates of low-income students, graduation rates controlled for social economic status, student faculty ratio, and full-time faculty has been increased and that for academic spending per student has been reduced.
There are few surprises at the very top. In the National Universities category, Princeton is first, followed by MIT, Harvard, Stanford, and Yale. A bit further down, venerable institutions such as the University of Chicago, Dartmouth College, and Tulane University have fallen significantly while the University of Texas at San Antonio, Florida Gulf Coast University, and California State University East Bay have improved largely because of a good performance with regard to social mobility.
Source:
US News