Campus & community, Campus news

Berkeley top U.S. public in new 'Times Higher Ed' rankings

By Public Affairs

UC Berkeley is the No. 1 U.S. public university and 13th overall in the world in the new Times Higher Education ‘s World University Rankings, released today.

CalTech ranked first overall, followed by the University of Oxford, Stanford University, the University of Cambridge and MIT.

The rankings are the latest in a string to place Berkeley as the premier U.S. public university. Its overall ranking, down from 8th last year, shows the impact of major changes in THE ‘s methodology. Other U.S. universities lost ground as well, including UCLA, which went from 12th last year to 16th but is the second-ranked U.S. public on the list.

Among the changes: THE doubled the number of institutions included, from 400 to 800. And it replaced Thomson Reuters as the source of its bibliometric data, using Elsevier instead.

THE also expanded its reputation survey, conducting it in nine new languages; Berkeley’s score on reputation has declined with changes in the survey method over the last two years, according to Berkeley’s Office of Planning and Analysis.

In other recent rankings, Berkeley was also the top U.S. public university; overall, it was 4th in the 2015 Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU), released in August, and 7th in the 2015 Center for World University Rankings (CWUR), released in July.

The complete 2015-16 THE rankings can be viewed here .